Specification of users’ cognitive functions and emotions to promote their training through Serious games

Abstract

Serious Games are gaining recognition as a powerful tool to promote education, specifically in organizational training processes, to achieve effective learning. In these learning processes, individuals must acquire specific cognitive and affective capacities depending on the organization’s objectives, which should be acquired through serious games. However, creating games that effectively train cognitive and affective skills requires a methodological approach to seamlessly integrate specific educational content, game mechanics, story, aesthetics, technology, and assessment tools, among other things. This paper presents a cognitive-affective model for conceptualizing the design of serious games. The model comprises cognitive and affective dimensions, each with its graphical notation, components, and behaviour. The cognitive dimension is based on neuroscience and game mechanics research, while the affective dimension is drawn from affective computing. This paper shows how the cognitive-affective model can guide the development of games that facilitate continuous training and generate cognitive/emotional experiences in specific situations. A case study highlights the model’s effectiveness in a gas explosion simulation explicitly designed for the mining sector. The model enables designers to create games that train users in risky situations, improving their behaviour in simulated dangerous situations in a safe environment. The model’s effectiveness was validated in two ways: 1) with a virtual SG and 2) through competition questions, which showed promising results.