Can children be taught values using game designs? Insights from a neurophysiological experimental study with children

Abstract

The economical and technological evolution has brought the situation where our attention is being targeted. Lots of creative professionals have been employed by commercial agencies to grab attention such as in a marketing space. On the other hand, there is a societal need to use the attentional resources for development of human values towards harmonious coexistence. Designers therefore have this twin responsibility to use creative processes to design such that it grabs attention towards one or the other direction. Today brain research is advancing at a rapid pace and it has a potential to provide insights into the value based decision processes within users as well as within designers. This paper reports neurophysiological study on value based decision in children during a game play. A visual story based interactive game was designed to elicit value-based decisions from children. Eighteen children (age group of 5 to 9 years) participated in the pilot study. The neurophysiological data was derived using an electroencephalography (EEG) device during the story-interaction. This paper reports findings on how the proposed design in this study can be implemented for eliciting specific values, and therefore be applicable in acting as a value-based education system for younger populations.