Abstract
Objective:
To design a cognitive behavioral videogame intervention and to evaluate its preliminary effect on improving youth’s perceptions about themselves, their future, and their ability by incorporating skill development in cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy to change perceptions.
Materials and Methods:
We conducted a pilot RCT to evaluate the preliminary efficacy of a videogame intervention, empowerED, in enhancing cognitive reappraisal skills. We also assessed beliefs/attitudes, self-efficacy, and emotional self-efficacy as well as user experience and feasibility. Youth (N = 100) aged 14–19 years from one school were enrolled in a pilot RCT assigned either to play empowerED or a control condition.
Results:
Improvements were noted in cognitive reappraisal in the empowerED group compared to the control group (LSM difference = 1.33, P = 0.01). There were no significant differences observed between treatment groups for beliefs/attitudes, self-efficacy, and emotional self-efficacy; however, the empowerED group reported improvements in beliefs/attitudes from pretest to posttest survey responses (M = 1.33, P = 0.01).
Conclusion:
Overall, the intervention was deemed easy to use and beneficial among youth, and feasibly delivered in a high school setting. Given the growing youth mental health needs in schools and the importance of school climate on healthy development, empowerED may offer an effective and innovative student-level approach to improve cognitive reappraisal and later empower youth to enact change in their school climate. Clinical Trials.gov Identifier: NCT04025294.
Impact statement
Videogames offer an engaging and easy to use approach to deliver a cognitive behavioral intervention and are feasibly delivered in schools. Through a brief single-session intervention, we showed promising results in delivering an emotion regulation strategy, and improving cognitive reappraisal, to alter one's perceptions. Further research is needed to explore if altering perceptions will lead to enacting change in one's school climate.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
