Date of Award

5-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

Psychology

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Yingying (Jennifer) Yang

Committee Member

Edward Merrill

Committee Member

Erin Kang

Abstract

Many cognitive tasks are perceived as boring by children due to their redundancy, lengthy trials, and required cognitive effort. Children’s performance on these tasks might therefore be hampered, not by a lack of cognitive ability, but rather by a lack of motivation to complete these tasks. Mental rotation, a type of cognitive task, has been extensively studied, due to its prevalence in daily living, in activities such as loading a dishwasher or packing a car, and its relation to STEM success. However, similar to other cognitive tasks, mental rotation tasks often result in fatigue and boredom in children. Hence, the current study incorporated the gamification elements of a cover story, feedback, points, and rewards, into a classic mental rotation task. 100 children between the ages of 6 and 9 years old received either a gamified mental rotation task first or second, and their performance was compared to that of a nongamified mental rotation task (i.e., baseline). The results found that performance increased for children receiving the gamified task following the baseline. More importantly, good performance was maintained from gamification to baseline conditions, suggesting that children’s motivation remained intact even after the gamified elements were removed. Furthermore, the personality traits of Agreeableness and Openness to Experience correlated with performance but did not predict the gamification effects. The practical implications of this study suggest that gamification be incorporated in cognitive task design for children, whereas the theoretical implications demonstrate the relationship between motivation and cognition.

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