Can serious games measure your cognitive profile in adults? An innovative proposal to evaluate and stimulate cognitive skills

Abstract

The Theory of multiple intelligences suggests that it is necessary to develop new methods to assess and conceptualise the human intellect. It is envisaged that serious games can offer an alternative form of evaluation, as game designers can create gameplay environments that incorporate the different intelligences into clues, puzzles and game challenges, so that players can not only acquire knowledge, social support and self-efficacy, but also easily evaluate their skills and abilities. This study aims to analyse the classificatory precision of cognitive profiles acquired from the use of a serious game based on multiple intelligences as well as examine the agreement between the serious game results and a self-report questionnaire. The sample consisted of 209 participants (22.5% men), aged between 19 and 59 years (M = 22.83, SD = 6.36) from secondary to higher education. The results revealed that the serious game presented a different classification capacity compared to the self-report questionnaire. The possibility of identifying different cognitive profiles would have implications for educators and researchers. For educators, it would allow the incorporation of more individualised and inclusive education practices, by adapting teaching methods to each student’s learning style. For researchers, it would shed light on the various structures of multiple intelligences in different samples.