Abstract

This study designed an interactive game for preschool children based on the basic social skill of emotion recognition. Ninety-five preschool children from three schools played two interactive games: a especially designed emotion game and a control game for a touch screen device. The increase in scores in recognising the emotion faces from pre-test to post-test is significant for girls when playing the emotion game, with especially large increases in scores from girls from the most deprived school. The boys scored higher for collaborative play and also scored significantly higher than girls at recognising anger but girls were better at recognising fear. Qualitative analysis using the Talk Taken Down technique showed more egocentric than social dialogue but also more non-verbal expressions of cooperation and enjoyment than verbal interaction with the game. The study concludes by suggesting seven design considerations for designing prosocial, collaborative games.