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A Maze Life header
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A Maze Life

A Maze Life is a Serious Game allowing to learn, in a simple and easy way, the main principles of the Developmental Psychology using the multiple intelligences model proposed by H. Gardner. During the game Human - a virtual creature depicted as a "pulsing sphere" - explores different social enviroments, rappresented as static coloured spheres. The virtual creature and the enviroments are described by a spectrum of multiple intelligences, and this comparison produces the different possible interactions: liking, anxiety, learning, disliling etc.

Try the demo

Introduction

A Maze Life emulates the evolution of a human life from birth to death. The protagonist of this virtual experience, named Human, is represented by a cyan-green small disk which becomes visible (for a very short time) only when the creatures moves from an enviroment to another. As long as Human lives within a given enviroment is possibile to detect it looking for the enviroment which is pulsing with a rythimic similar to the heartbeat. Human is described by many parameters, some of numeric type (discrete spectrum variables), other of functional type (continuous spectrum variables).

The learning objectives of the game are:

Spectrum of multiple intelligences

  • To become familiar with the terminology and the main concepts of the psychology: definition of intelligence ad an adaptive process (Piaget), constructivism approach, Freud's structural model etc.
  • To learn, as an outcome of the virtual experience, that the evolution of a creature is due to genetics factors, for example the cognitive styles described by the spectrum of multiple intelligences, as well the subject's interpretation of the interactions with the different social enviroments.
  • To reflect on the importance of the cultural aspects as a factor contributing to the selection of the possibile (or more probable) social dynamics.
  • To introduce and present an overview of the different psychology branches considering the developmental process: Developmental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cultural Psychology and Sociale Psychology

Game goals

A Maze Life can be played in many different ways:

  • Secrete: the player is not aware of the Human's cognitive styles, hence he must experiment different enviroments in order to develop self-awareness and getting to know himsfelf. This game approach is very similar to real life, where we can measure all the indicators of our success, but we can not measure exactly ours personal cognitive styles.
  • Simulation: the player inserts the data describing a specific set of cognitive styles, and then he tries to play different game sessions in order to see in which way the evolution of Human can be influenced from his life experience (eventually trying different cultures). This game approach should help to reflect on how much important the growth enviroments are, given the same genetics skills.
  • Analytics: the player loads in the game a table of enviroments, listed in a given order, specifying for each enviroment the time spent in that enviroment (in months). Then the player loads the descripion of an "ending state", by specifying the values of all the game parameters, age included. After this the game can be used to identify the set of Human's cognitive styles having the maximum probability to live in all those enviroments, in the specified order, and arriving in the specified "ending state". This game approach could be used, once a complete calibration of the mathematical model, to propose an evaluation of the cognitive styles of an actual human person given his curriculum vitae.

How to play

The game starts with Human placed in the “mother” environment. Depending by “movement capability” of the virtual creature, the player can try to move Human from an environment to another environment. Such movement is not deterministic, since there is a certain degree of uncertainty, due to the presence of other factors, which are: Human's unconscious desires; attractive or repulsive forces between Human and all the surrounding environments. To move from an environment from another the player must drag the mouse from the starting location to the target location (where the player aims to move the creature).
When the mouse is released, three colored arrows will be shown: the intentional direction of the movement (red – the Freudian IO concept), the social conditional force (blue - the Freudian SUPER-IO concept) and the total force resulting from the sum of the unconscious desires (yellow - the Freudian ES concept).

When these three arrows appears, the player could choose following actions:

  • Stay: staying in the current environment. This means that Human will try to adapt to the environment and, in the same time, the environment will adapt to Human. If the user wants to increase the capability to change the environment, instead of just having the Human creature adapting to it, he can move up the Action bar (placed on the top left of the board).
  • Move: trying to move from the current location to the target location. As said above, this movement is not deterministic because is influenced by other factors, hence the resulting trajectory of the movement could be not linear.
  • Love: Human takes a commitment with the current environment. Choosing the “love” action could mean to sign a contract, to get engaged with a partner, to plan a wedding or simply stating a “vow” versus the current environment.
  • Hate: Human cancel an existing commitment with the current environment. Choosing the “hate” action could mean to revoke a contract, to break with a partner, to cancel a wedding or simply having a very hard row with the current environment.
  • Quit: ends the current game session.

Aside from moving from an environment to another, the player could also:

  • Do nothing, staying in the current environment, and monitoring the Human status to understand if he is happy in the social environment that he is experiencing.
  • Explore other environments without moving, by simply clicking with the mouse on the other environments. This event will show to the user a diagram depicting the multiple intelligences spectrum of the selected environment. In the final version of the game this feature could allow to read some text or description explaining the Gardner's model and the Piaget definition of intelligence.
  • Evaluate possible movements, by dragging the mouse (from the current Human's location) but without selecting any option (move, stay, love, hate) when the arrows are visible. By doing this the player can see how the directions of the arrows change time after time, and this should allow him to guess or reflect of the dynamic evolution of the Freudian' structural model.

Notice that the action “stay”, available when the IO, SUPER-IO and ES arrows are visible, is different from “doing nothing”. The choice of “doing nothing” is the default behavior that Human has in every day life, when he just goes on with the normal activities, as usual. The “stay” action means instead changing something in the current environment, without leaving that type of environment.

For example, if Human is in the “School” environment, choosing “stay” in that environment could mean to change the exams study plan, changing classroom or even changing the school location because moving from a town to another town: in all these cases Human will not leave the school environment, but will change his relationship with the environment. This approach to definition of “changing an environment” is taken from the psychological theory developed by Mischel (1973).

The goal of the player is to find a dynamic set of strategies from moving to an environment to another, in order to maximize all game parameters, which will be summed together to produce an overall score rating. Hence the player could simply focus on the task to get the highest possible score, this should correspond to the situation where the player best understandd the learning objects of the game.

Psychological Model

The mathematical model used to describe the psychological principles is based on the application of the fuzzy logic, as suggested by the huge success of the researches on the Artificial Intelligent exploiting such approach. The mathematical structure to depict some of the game parameters relies on the wave functions used in Quantum Mechanics, this can be explained in two ways: from an historical point of view this choice is a possible interpretation of the Isomorphism principle in the Gestalt Theory, and of the field theories introduced by Kurt Lewin. From a mathematical point of view the Quantum Mechanics approach, using a not deterministic paradigma, offeres a simpler model with respect of BDI agents, and the OCC Theory of emotions, because it does not require to know the subject state, which remains unknown.

The model does not pretend to emulate all the emotinal states experienced by Human, it aims instead to describe directly the epiphenomena that should correlate the cognitive aspects (interaction between subject and enviroment) with the creature's evolution and the resulting gratification (the satisfaction of the Human's needs).


Bibliography

  • [1] Paolo Legrenzi, "Storia della psicologia" - Il Mulino, Bologna 1982.
  • [2] Daniel Golemanm, "Intelligenza Emotiva" - BUR, Milano 2010.
  • [3] H. Rudolph Schaffer, "Psicologia dello Sviluppo" - Edizioni Cortina, Milano 2005.
  • [4] iJET - International Journal Emerging Technologies in Learning - No. S3/2010