Iuga Ioana Alexandra, Tomoiaga Cristina Teodora, David Oana Alexandra
Evidence-Based Psychological Assessment and Interventions Doctoral School, Babeș-Bolyai University, 400015 Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Babeș-Bolyai University, 400015 Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Children (Basel). 2023 Jul 25;10(8):1276. doi: 10.3390/children10081276.
Children and adolescents' help-seeking behaviors are often limited by fear, uncertainty, and stigma, as well as challenges with finding the right intervention, help, and a lack of familiarity with the process. A promising direction for the development of therapeutic interventions targeted at children is embedding them into gamified interventions, known as therapeutic or serious games. The aim of this paper is to describe the protocol of the beta REThink therapeutic game and to evaluate the usability of the game in a sample of children and adolescents.
The study was delivered in schools, where 137 children and adolescents aged between 9 and 16 years old played the levels of the REThink game, followed by filling in the usability questionnaire.
The results show above average evaluations for all levels of the game, for every dimension evaluated, namely presence/immersion, enjoyment, learning effectiveness, narratives, goal clarity, adequacy of learning material, and motivation. This study contributes to the literature on the usability of cognitive behavioral therapy-based therapeutic games for improvements in the emotion regulation abilities of children and adolescents, which can guide researchers interested in testing the REThink game in different protocols, as well to encourage its use by mental health specialists and parents.
儿童和青少年的求助行为常常受到恐惧、不确定性、污名化的限制，同时在寻找合适的干预措施、帮助以及对相关过程缺乏了解方面也面临挑战。针对儿童开发治疗性干预措施的一个有前景的方向是将其嵌入游戏化干预中，即所谓的治疗性游戏或严肃游戏。本文旨在描述β版REThink治疗游戏的方案，并评估该游戏在儿童和青少年样本中的可用性。
该研究在学校开展，137名年龄在9至16岁之间的儿童和青少年玩了REThink游戏的各个关卡，随后填写可用性问卷。
结果显示，对于游戏的各个关卡，在每个评估维度上，即沉浸感、趣味性、学习效果、故事情节、目标清晰度、学习材料的充分性和动机等方面，评价均高于平均水平。本研究为基于认知行为疗法的治疗性游戏在提高儿童和青少年情绪调节能力方面的可用性文献做出了贡献，可为有兴趣在不同方案中测试REThink游戏的研究人员提供指导，也鼓励心理健康专家和家长使用该游戏。
