Interactive Games Effects on Children’s Affective Cooperation: Evaluating Cooperation Through Kansei-Based Play and Design Sections

How, from childhood, can we develop an affective and cooperative society? Based on the play value for children’s development, this research aimed to understand the sensory effects of interactive toys on three aspects of Affective Cooperation: children’s empathy disposition; displayed cooperative behavior; and perception of cooperation. To understand this, we have developed ‘play and design’ workshop sections where two main groups of children played modified game versions of an interactive toy, to then perform team design tasks. A third group performed the tasks before playing the game. We selected and developed specific tools for evaluating the Affective Cooperation aspects, acquiring individual results, later co-related. Design outcomes were also subjected to analysis. Among our results, while we found a positive correlation between empathy and displayed cooperative behavior, they seemed to be inversely related with children’s perception of cooperation. Additionally, the effect of the high game stimuli prior to team-related tasks seemed to contribute more to the children’s perception than to their cooperative behavior. Although inconclusive, design analysis pointed slightly better results on the high game stimuli group. Based on our findings, we intend to understand how interactive games can contribute to developing children’s Cooperation, by seeking a middle point where behavior and perception are positively matched.