“The Park of Emotions”: A Serious Game for the Development of Emotional Intelligence in Children
Source abstract
Abstract
The potential of digital games to enhance learning in various areas of child development has attracted increasing interest in children’s emotional well-being and social–emotional difficulties. The present serious game named “The Park of Emotions” was based on the nine-level pyramid model of emotional intelligence, had conceptual relevance to the questions of a new emotional intelligence scale, and served as an intervention tool. The aim was to experimentally evaluate to what extent the serious game “The Park of Emotions” improved children’s emotional intelligence through the improvised scale measuring the emotional intelligence of children aged 9–12. The study was conducted on a group of 436 children aged 9–10 years, 4th grade. To assess the impact of the program, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on the experimental group and the control group at the pre-test stage, as well as an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA post-test). The results for the post-intervention ANCOVA confirmed the existence of significant differences between the groups, as participants in the experimental group had significantly higher scores compared to participants in the control group on the total score and individual subscales. Furthermore, ANCOVA results confirmed that the intervention had a similar positive effect for both sexes. Consequently, this study experimentally validates an effective intervention tool, highlighting the importance of implementing digital games aimed at improving emotional intelligence and emotional skills throughout childhood and preadolescence. “The Park of Emotions” could be considered a useful serious game that affects personal, emotional, and social factors.
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Research context
OpenAlex topics: Educational Games and Gamification · Emotional Intelligence and Performance · Child Development and Digital Technology
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
Affiliations
Net Media Lab, Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications, National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos”, 15310 Agia Paraskevi, Greece
Information and Communication Systems Engineering Department, University of the Aegean, 83200 Karlovasi, Greece
Department of Pedagogy and Primary Education, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, 10676 Athens, Greece
Department of Psychology, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15784 Athens, Greece
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