Persistence temperament associated with children playing math games between touch panel and embodied interaction

The different designs of various interactive gaming controllers affect posture and muscle loading of the body. It is assumed that prolonged exposure to the interactive gaming controllers can affect the effectiveness in using the game for the purposes of learning. This study explores the differences in behavioural responses among students with different temperaments regarding mathematic gameplay by comparing the touch-based and gesture-based interactive devices. The experiment was designed for 119 5-year-old kindergarten children, and valid data from 99 individuals were analysed for this study. The results indicated that participants in the touch-based interaction (TBI) groups performed better than the participants in the gesture-based interaction (GBI) groups with respect to numerical counting in both games. The results also showed that among all dimensions of temperaments, only persistence had a positive correlation to TBI. This implied that TBI was preferred over GBI for kindergarten children. Accordingly, e-learning designers should place more emphasis on TBI.