Background

The use of games for social skill development in the classroom is accelerating at a tremendous rate. At the same time, the research surrounding games designed for teaching social skills remains fragmented. This systematic review summarizes the current existing literature on social skill serious games for young people ages 5 to 19 and is the first review of serious games to note the demographic and geographic component of these studies.

Method

This review included papers that: evaluated a game designed to teach social skills; included measurable, quantitative outcomes; have a translation or be published in English; were peer-reviewed; date from January 2010 to May 2020; and have a nonclinical study population between ages of 5 to 19. Keywords were obtained from the CASEL 5 framework.

Results

Our findings are mixed but suggest that serious games may improve social skills when used alongside in-person discussion. We also found potential effects of the length of time of gameplay, intervention, and follow-up on social skill serious game effectiveness. Although this review found promising research conducted in East Asian countries and with minority samples in the United States, the majority of social skill serious game research takes place in the United States and Australia, with unreported demographic information and white-majority samples.

Conclusions

Due to the limited number of published studies in this area and studies lacking methodological rigor, the effectiveness of using games to teach social skills and the impact of background on social skill learning require further discussion.

中文翻译：

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严肃游戏作为年轻人社交技能发展的补充工具：文献系统回顾

背景

在课堂上使用游戏来培养社交技能正在以惊人的速度加速。与此同时，围绕旨在教授社交技能的游戏的研究仍然支离破碎。这篇系统综述总结了当前关于5 至 19 岁年轻人社交技巧严肃游戏的现有文献，并且是第一次对严肃游戏的综述，指出这些研究的人口统计学和地理成分。

方法

该评论包括以下论文： 评估旨在教授社交技能的游戏；包括可衡量的定量结果；有英文翻译或出版；经过同行评审；2010年1月至2020年5月；并且有一个年龄在 5 到 19 岁之间的非临床研究人群。关键字来自 CASEL 5 框架。

结果

我们的研究结果喜忧参半，但表明严肃的游戏在与面对面的讨论一起使用时可能会提高社交技能。我们还发现了游戏时间长短、干预和跟进对社交技能严肃游戏有效性的潜在影响。尽管这篇综述发现在东亚国家进行的研究很有前景，并且在美国的少数样本中进行了研究，但大多数社交技能严肃游戏研究发生在美国和澳大利亚，没有报告的人口统计信息和白人占多数的样本。

结论

由于该领域已发表的研究数量有限且研究方法缺乏严谨性，因此使用游戏教授社交技能的有效性以及背景对社交技能学习的影响需要进一步讨论。