A Fuzzy Control System for Inductive Video Games
This work addresses enhancing learning effectiveness for students in educational games by integrating emotional induction, though it is incremental as it builds on existing dynamic difficulty adjustment methods.
The paper tackled improving learning in educational video games by inducing positive emotions in players, using a fuzzy control system that adjusts game levels and aesthetic content based on performance and emotional state from voice analysis. Results from 20 subjects showed that the proposed inductive control technique led to faster emotional shifts to pleasant states and better maintenance in the flow zone compared to conventional dynamic difficulty adjustment.
It has been shown that the emotional state of students has an important relationship with learning; for instance, engaged concentration is positively correlated with learning. This paper proposes the Inductive Control (IC) for educational games. Unlike conventional approaches that only modify the game level, the proposed technique also induces emotions in the player for supporting the learning process. This paper explores a fuzzy system that analyzes the players' performance and their emotional state for controlling the level and aesthetic content of an educational video game. The emotional state of the player is recognized through voice analysis. A total of 20 subjects played a video game designed to practice basic math skills; for each trial, a student plays two times in a row the same game but each time the game was controlled by one of the two approaches ---Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) and IC, the playing order was assigned randomly. Results show that when the proposed approach is used the participants changed faster from Unpleasant--low to pleasant or high emotions, and reached softly and kept in the flow zone. These experiments demonstrate that the inductive control technique improves the learning effectiveness through detection and stimulation of positive emotions.