Designing multimedia games for young children's taxonomic concept development

Yao Ting Sung*, Kuo En Chang, Meng Da Lee

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

42 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study aimed to design and evaluate multimedia games which were based on the theories of children's development of taxonomic concepts. Factors that might affect children's classification skills, such as use of single physical characteristics of objects, competition between thematic and taxonomic relationships, difficulty in forming hierarchical categories, were identified. Several strategies for overcoming the above disadvantages, such as verbal hints, linguistic labeling, exemplar comparison, and explicit statements were implemented in the Software for Rebuilding Taxonomy (SoRT) for improving children's taxonomic concept learning. Sixty children, aged 4 and 5, participated in the evaluation of SoRT. The results showed that the SoRT was helpful to improve children's distinction between thematic and taxonomic relationships and their learning of hierarchical taxonomic concepts.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1037-1051
Number of pages15
JournalComputers and Education
Volume50
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2008 Apr

Keywords

  • Classification
  • Cognitive development
  • Multimedia games
  • Taxonomy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Computer Science
  • Education

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