Effectiveness of “Maghzineh” Cognitive Games on Response Inhibition of Children with Externalizing Emotional Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

Dysfunction of response inhibition is among the most important features of children and adolescents with emotional behavioral disorder. Inhibition is the power essential in preventing many maladaptive behaviors such as substance abuse, high risk decision making and even crime. Response inhibition is very much needed in helping a person in resisting against what is not desirable and instead doing what leads to desirable consequences, which is critical in leading a productive and peaceful life. Game-based interventions to improve response inhibition has been used for children with behavioral disorders. Also, video game-based interventions have attracted many researchers treating other groups of children with special needs, since these games can be used without therapists’ presence, which is especially safer in days of pandemic of Covid-19. This study aimed in evaluating the effectiveness of Maghzineh video game to improve response inhibition of children with externalizing emotional behavioral disorder. Effectiveness of this intervention was evaluated by a quasi-experimental research with pretest-posttest and a control group. The population of this study were 8 to 11 years old boys with externalizing disorders in the city of Tehran. These children were screened by Children’s Behavioral Checklist (CBCL) and those who had high scores in externalizing disorders had been selected. 20 students of the selected participants were assigned randomly to the experimental (10) and the control (10) groups. The experimental group played with cognitive games for 24 sessions while the control group received no intervention and waited in the waiting list. Their response inhibition was analyzed using Stroop Color and Word test (Stroop, 1935) before and after the intervention. The data was analyzed by Multiple Analysis of the Covariance (MANCOVA). The result showed that there was a significant difference in response inhibition of the experimental group, compared to the control group (p<0.05). It is concluded that Maghzineh cognitive video games can be used to improve response inhibition of children with externalizing emotional behavioral disorder.