Research Article

Cognitive and Social-Emotional Skills Training: Why Should We Consider Board Games?

Po Ling Chen*^1,2 and Tedd Denis¹

¹Department of Psychology, School of Medicine, International Medical University, Malaysia

²School of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Nottingham Malaysia

Submission: March 15, 2022; Published: March 23, 2022

*Corresponding author: Po Ling Chen, School of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Nottingham Malaysia, Malaysia

How to cite this article: Debbie Eisen, Robert YL Zee, James F, Steven E E. Contaminated Musical Wind Instruments as a Vector for Disease Transmission. Psychol Behav Sci Int J. 2022; 18(4): 555992 DOI: 10.19080/PBSIJ.2022.18.555992.

Abstract

With the current 4th Industrial Revolution, when mastering soft skills have become more crucial than ever, we suggest that board games can play a big role in training two of the most desirable soft skills of the young minds: cognitive and social-emotional skills. Playing board games promote critical thinking, such as analytical reasoning, creativity, decision making and problem solving, which require higher order thinking and complex mental processes. Board games also serve as tools for team building, social engagement, communications and negotiations, among the most vital skills that contribute to success at workplace. In this opinion article, we strongly recommend using board games as training tools to enhance this skill set.

Keywords: Cognition; Emotion; Learning; Social Interactions; Face-To-Face; Pandemic

Introduction

Playing board games has a long history of stimulating problem solving [1]. Historically, playing games always occurred as a form of entertainment or passing leisure time. Gradually, playing games is perceived as something dissociated from serious learning or working, especially when learning is viewed as supposed to be serious but playing games is always fun which is the opposite of seriousness. Until recently, when the revolution of education has become an interesting topic for discussion, the perception of gaming has started to change, as educators and researchers have started to realise the underlying skills that gaming can foster to bring to effective training of executive functions and active learning [2].

Cognitive Skills

Cognitive skills, which at times is also known as thinking skills, are the core mental processes we experience every day that allow us to concentrate, learn, remember, reason, judge, make decisions and solve problems. Although sounding fundamental and automatic, this skill set is also the one that distinguishes the brainy from the brainless, the creative from the unimaginative, the success from the failure, and the rich from the poor. Among all the cognitive functions, the most desirable and related to every day executive functions is critical thinking, such as analytical reasoning, creativity, decision-making, and problem solving.

Creativity, which according to [3], is derived from four different processes that an individual undergoes; fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality. Fluency implies openness to ideas and being explorative without being too fixated with petty details [4], which could hinder imagination. We believe that fluency derived from concentrating on relevant details and organising thought to conclude a better understanding about the world, something that already have been assimilated into many board games. Flexibility, when referring to cognitive function, is defined as the mental capability to adapt to a novel or an unfamiliar situation when things happen unexpectedly [5]. We believe that this flexibility in the thinking is fundamentally required to achieve many goals in almost all board games.

Playing board games promotes analytical reasoning. Due to the dynamic nature of board games (i.e., the planning and strategy of movements changes when playing with different opponents), every game involves critical evaluation of own planning through analysing the potential benefits or loss of strategy. Moreover, the same mental efforts apply to predicting the moves of the opponent. If playing against a strong opponent, one must be creative, mentally flexible, and courageous enough to try different strategies that may not be easily predicted. Therefore, this further probes divergent thinking that could encourage new decisions to be made. It is a common situation that playing board games presents players with alternative solutions at different decision points where players do not have the liberty to possess it all [6].

The whole decision-making process easily resembles making choices in life based on current and future circumstances, in which every move decided may involve sacrifices as it is very often that, in the real world, we do not just go from one privilege to another (e.g., the more recourses we gather, the more cost we have to bear). Therefore, it is essential to keep probability concept in check when evaluating the current state and the goal state.

All the above mentioned mental processes may not necessarily warrant a victory in a game, nevertheless it is the latent learning (i.e., mental efforts involved in the whole complex thinking process) that should be deemed as the favourable gain in the end of the game, not to mention the fun that one can experience throughout the activity.

Social-Emotional Skills

One of the biggest advantages that board games has to offer is its ability to create a face-to-face social engagement between players. Although due to the current global pandemic, face-to-face interactions have been restricted, but this type of interaction is deemed to come back to life at some point while many countries have now started relaxing the Covid-19 restrictions. One reason why face-to-face social interactions are effective towards cognitive stimulation is because a lot of familiar information is encoded in non-verbal cues that are exchangeable as compared to a digital platform, where the social possibilities are restricted [7]. For instance, when playing against an opponent, the player can look for an expression of hesitation made by the opponent that would indicate a bad move; this suggests the possibilities of board games in enhancing an individual’s emotional cue processing. In games such as Resistance, Hoax, Sheriff of Nottingham, or Cockroach Poker, recognising or identifying certain emotions that could predict the underlying intention (either lying or telling the truth) heavily relies on one’s ability to actively process the emotional cues such as micro-facial expression or quick movement of eye gazes. Besides, the player also learns to master own emotional expression in a way that is not easily predicted by the opponent. This allows opportunities to learn how to control one’s emotional expression in social contexts, especially when regulating negative affect is crucial.

Collaborative board games such as Pandemic, Robinson Crusoe, or Eldritch Horror, just to name a few, has the perk to build team spirit and promote collaborative decision-making behaviours. For instance, the main objective of Pandemic was to prevent communicable disease from spreading globally. A few characters such as the medic, scientist, researcher, and others must rely on one another to solve the shared problem. Each role has its own strength, and every player learns and recognises the vital role of each player so every move or decision made will only get closer to solving the crisis. In the case of Forbidden Desert, when one character is unable to survive from the crisis, the whole team loses the game and this creates an emotional impact to other players. This situation corresponds with Koster’s [8] list of social mechanics in board games, in which it is mentioned that board games are capable to bring about certain social mechanics such as helping, status, handicapping, roles, trust, community and teamwork that contribute to social engagement. Undoubtedly, board games are the essential tools to foster teamwork among the players, this is where the individual would have the opportunity to complement each other and simultaneously increase the quality of social interactions. Through teamwork, the players are able to recognise their distinctive roles and perform the task optimally to achieve a higher rate of success through collaboration, communication, negotiation, and trust.

Additionally, playing board games also promotes emotional competence. When losing a game, one learns how to deal with failures and emotional disappointment. A truly fun game should not restrict to only victory but the pleasant emotional experience that one has gone through during the activity should be emphasised. When a player learns to place greater value on processes and less on the outcome, it changes the attitude towards failure and motivates oneself to see opportunities to learn for betterment.

Conclusion

It is hard not to think of the benefits that board games can offer in stimulating critical thinking and social interactions. With a change of mind set that playing games does not necessarily indicate passing leisure time or that one is not actively learning or working on a problem, playing board games as a channel for cognitive and social-emotional skills training should be highly recommended and adapted in many learning institutions and workplaces. Perhaps authorities or employers should keep questioning themselves: “What if everyone can learn how to solve complex problems in a fun way?”.

References

1. Smith E, Golding L (2018) Use of board games in higher education literature review. Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research 16(2): 24-29.
2. Romero M, Usart M, Ott M (2015) Can Serious Games Contribute to Developing and Sustaining 21^st-Century Skills? Games and Culture 10(2): 148-177.
3. Torrance EP (1966) Torrance tests of creative thinking-norms technical manual research edition-verbal tests, forms A and B-figural tests, forms A and B. Princeton: Personnel Pres. Inc, USA.
4. Saasen M (2017) Creativity: Fluency, Felxibility, Orignality and Elaboration. Retrieved from Game Changer's
5. Han K, Kin IY, Kim JJ (2012) Assessment of cognitive flexibility in real life using virtual reality: A comparison of healthy individuals and schizophrenia patients. Comput Biol Med 42(8): 841-847.
6. Thatcher G (2017) Using Boardgames to Foster Cticial Thinking and Communication Skills. Palm Springs, California, United States.
7. Pereira A, Prada R, Paiva A (2012) Socially Present Board Game Opponents. In: Nijholt A., Romão T., Reidsma D. (Eds.), ACE 2012: Advances in Computer Entertainment, Heidelberg, Germany. 7624: pp. 101-116.
8. Koster R (2011) Social Mechanics for Social games. Games Development Conference. San Francisco, California, USA.