Alone or Together: Exploring the Effect of Physical Co-presence on the Emotional Expressions of Game Playing Children Across Cultures

Abstract

Alone or togetherShahid, S.; Krahmer, E.J.; Swerts, M.G.J. Published in: Fun and Games Document version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.-Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research -You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain -You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright, please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Abstract. In this paper, we investigate the influence of physical co-presence on the emotional expressions of game playing children. We show that the emotional response of children belonging to different age groups and different cultural backgrounds varies when they play a game alone or together with their friends. A simple but quite effective number guessing game was developed to use as a tool for inducing emotions in an ethical way, which was played by Pakistani and Dutch individuals and pairs. The audiovisual emotional data thus collected was used in two perception tests in which Dutch viewers observed and classified the emotional response of Pakistani and Dutch children. Results show that the correct classification in both cultures is higher for children playing games in pairs, thus children in pairs are more expressive than individuals. Furthermore, both Pakistani individuals and pairs are more expressive than Dutch ones.

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