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The Emotion Detectives Game: Supporting the Social-emotional Competence of Young Children

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Serious Games and Edutainment Applications

Abstract

The potential of digital games to enhance learning in different areas of child development has drawn increasing interest amid growing concern about children’s emotional well-being, social-emotional difficulties, and problem behaviors alongside diminishing economic resources for intervention and habilitation. However, digital games designed to promote social-emotional competence are surprisingly scarce. In this chapter, we explore children’s use of the digital game Emotion Detectives (ED), designed to promote children’s acquisition of emotional knowledge skills (e.g., recognizing, appreciating, and understanding emotions and their expressions), prosocial behaviors (e.g., helping, sharing, comforting, and showing concern for others), and problem-solving abilities. Analyzing children’s gameplay sessions in two Finnish day care centers improved understanding of children’s gameplay experiences, social-emotional knowledge, and collaborative learning. From the double effect of practicing social-emotional skills simultaneously in the game and in peer interactions, ED has the potential to be an effective learning environment for children. The game’s humorous features, creative opportunities, and possibilities to make progress while playing clearly motivated children to learn.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Merja Koivula, Marleena Mustola, Sari Lipponen & Marja-Leena Laakso

  2. Åbo Akademi and University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Kerttu Huttunen

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  1. Merja Koivula
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  2. Kerttu Huttunen
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  3. Marleena Mustola
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  5. Marja-Leena Laakso
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Correspondence to Merja Koivula .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, United Kingdom

    Minhua Ma

  2. College of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom

    Andreas Oikonomou

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Koivula, M., Huttunen, K., Mustola, M., Lipponen, S., Laakso, ML. (2017). The Emotion Detectives Game: Supporting the Social-emotional Competence of Young Children. In: Ma, M., Oikonomou, A. (eds) Serious Games and Edutainment Applications . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51645-5_2

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