Emotion faces

Abstract

We describe the design and initial evaluation of an interactive game that enables preschool children to practise a basic social skill: emotion recognition. Users construct faces to represent 5 basic emotions through the manipulation of individual face parts. An iterative user-centred design process was used to gather image and sound data for the game. A field evaluation revealed that the children (7 boys and 4 girls) enjoyed playing the game and were able to match facial expression to emotions. Girls employed a different approach to game play than boys and achieved a higher success rate but made fewer overall attempts. Affective and co-operative activity was evident with the children showing joint attention and mirroring of emotions during play.