More and more games are designed to promote mental health. If these games are found to be effective, it is important to investigate which factors are responsible for the improvements in mental health. Most often, this type of research focuses on the specific clinical techniques that were designed into the game. However, from the clinical literature it is known that, for instance, expectations, motivation, and one’s mindset about the malleability of symptoms play a major role in positive intervention outcomes. In my project I aim to investigate these nonspecific factors and examine how we can manipulate these factors in order to optimize video games for mental health.
Aniek Wols
Isabela Granic
Anna Lichtwarck-Aschoff
Tom Hollenstein
Marlou Poppelaars
Children who experience the death of a parent or sibling can feel isolated and alone in their grief and often lack access to safe, supportive, and developmentally appropriate online settings where they can connect with other peers and caring adults who “get” their grief. ExperienceCraft is a youth-led, online community for grieving children, where they can play, connect, and learn with others who have experienced the death of a caregiver, sibling, or close member of their community.
Bloombox Group
Despite widespread claims that video gaming is harmful for children's social and emotional development, hardly any research has tracked children over time to verify these claims. Moreover, such claims run contrary to the importance which psychologists have given to play. This project aimed to address these matters.
Adam Lobel
Isabela Granic
Rutger Engels
William Burk
Lisanne Stone
This project investigates the influences of different aspects of video game play behavior on the adjustment and social relationships of adolescents. In an annual survey, adolescents indicate their well-being and various elements of their video game play behavior (such as their motivation for gaming, type of games played, and the social context in which games are played). The aim of the project is to investigate how average, day-today gaming affects the social development of teens.
Geert Verheijen
Sabine Stoltz
Yvonne van den Berg
Toon Cillessen
This project strives to create a suite of analog games to be implemented in classrooms. The goal of these games is to improve children's emotional competencies in three domains which past research highlights as being crucial for healthy development: emotion vocabulary, cognitive reappraisal skills, and children's theory of emotion.
Adam Lobel
Andrea Samson
David Sander
Owen Harris
Jeremy Falger
Isabela Granic