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Enhancing children’s cognitive skills: An experimental study on virtual reality-based gamified educational practices

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Abstract

Serious game-based learning is a high-fashioned topic in educational technology which helps children learn and train their skills. Most existing literature focuses on the improvement of children’s specific abilities or skills, such as reading comprehension, attention, memory, etc. However, for cognitively impaired children, it is necessary to train their comprehensive cognitive ability. In this paper, serious game-based learning is defined as the integration of cognitive theory, instructional content and gaming elements to create educational games that leverage the motivational and immersive nature of gaming to enhance learning outcomes. We classify the gamification elements involved in cognitive training and then combine them with Piaget’s theory of cognitive development in order to develop a cognitive training framework consists of four sessions which is expected to enhance the cognitive function of children with cognitive deficits. In total 50 cognitively impaired children are recruited to participate in the test. Evaluation results reveal that our cognitive training framework is helpful in improving the cognitive ability of children with cognitive deficits. However,  the issue of how long this cognitive improvement will last still remains to be explored in future research.

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files). Requests for material should be made to the corresponding authors.

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Funding

The Scientific and Technological Project in Henan Province, Grant/Award Numbers: 222102210030.

The “Jie Bang Gua Shuai” project of the major science and technology program in Henan Province, Grant/Award Numbers: 211110110500.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Software Engineering, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, Zhengzhou, China

    Xiaohang Dong, Hui Liang & Yawen Zhang

  2. College of Computer Science, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

    Xiaohang Dong

  3. School of Computer Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Xianghua Ding

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  1. Xiaohang Dong
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Correspondence to Xiaohang Dong.

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Conflicts of interests/Competing interests

We declare that we have no financial and personal conflicts of interests with other people or other organizations that may inappropriately influence our work. There are no professional or personal conflicts of interests of any nature or any kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review in, the manuscript entitled.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The IRB approval number is PMSM-20210227.

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Dong, X., Liang, H., Ding, X. et al. Enhancing children’s cognitive skills: An experimental study on virtual reality-based gamified educational practices. Educ Inf Technol 29, 7569–7594 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-12075-y

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