Carnegie Mellon News - Carnegie Mellon University: Students in Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) created a game to help children who have experienced trauma. The game earned an honorable mention from the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations PEACEapp competition.
4 comments:
I love this idea for children to experience therapy through an interactive and positive game. This idea keeps kids involved and engaged in what they are doing. And because it's fun and a learning experience, the children will be able ti remember what they game taught through their future experiences. I remember as a child I always used to play "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" This game used to be so much fun. I remember every moment I could I would go the computer to play a level on this game. But not was it enjoyable, but it was also a learning experience for me. It broaden my horizons on geography. It specifically focused on the location of the Soviet Union and the Pacific Ocean. And I remember my mother telling me that I know too much about these locations. And it was great because I felt like an expert in those areas, but I never would've guessed that this game would teach me so much. I definitely agree with this tactic to help children cope with trauma and I hope it works.
I think it is great that they made a video game to help children with trauma. Most video games are just about the fun of the game and can be very violent sometimes. Video games are known to turn your brain into mush and not have any intellectual components. This video game seems to be fun as well as helpful to children. It will help children think more about other people’s feelings and the causes and affects of their actions. It is also a good challenge for ETC students because they need to think about those issues as well to be able to make the game and each level. It is important that they are able to make games and programs that can be beneficial to other people, especially children. It is very important to teach children cognitive processing at a young age because then they will grow up to be better adults and they are also able to deal with trauma better.
This is such a great game! It’s things like this that make me really happy to be going to Carnegie Mellon University. I love that they are thinking about helping children who have gone through trauma through a game. Kids love to play video games and already they do it to escape life for a while and enter into a new world. If they can get help for their traumatic experiences while playing something fun, this could be revolutionary. I think video games should always be a way to teach children something new while providing them with a great pastime, though I recognize that that is not always the case. I remember playing this game called “Age of Mythology” that taught me so much about Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology that I still remember to this day and only remember because of that game. When we eventually learned about mythology in high school, I was a pro at it. More games need to be made to teach. But they need to be fun and entertaining and almost trick the kid into thinking they aren't learning anything when really they are. It’s like what Randy Pausch said in The Last Lecture, there has to be that hidden lesson that you don't realize you are getting until after you’ve done the thing. mo
As someone with background in biology and psychology, I have been exposed to the question of how to treat children many times. Medically, how do you get a child to take a shot without intervention from five different assistants? This area becomes much more hazy when applied to psychology. How do you help a child improve and move forward without relying on an innate sense of maturity and advanced comprehension? This game plays directly to one of the most fundamental elements of childhood: why? This is perhaps one of the most benign, least intrusive ways to gain an understanding of a child's state and cognitive processes. As a whole, I think research in this area is critical as childhood traumas occur at such a formative and critical time in a person's life. For too long, insufficient treatment methods based off of successful adult methods have been in practice allowing children to undergo incomplete treatment. Creating something approachable and enjoyable for a child, especially post-trauma, is widely applicable and extremely valuable.
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