Alone or Together: Exploring the Effect of Physical Co-presence on the Emotional Expressions of Game Playing Children Across Cultures

摘要

In this paper, we investigate the influence of physical co-presence on the emotional expressions of game playing children. We show that the emotional response of children belonging to different age groups and different cultural backgrounds varies when they play a game alone or together with their friends. A simple but quite effective number guessing game was developed to use as a tool for inducing emotions in an ethical way, which was played by Pakistani and Dutch individuals and pairs. The audiovisual emotional data thus collected was used in two perception tests in which Dutch viewers observed and classified the emotional response of Pakistani and Dutch children. Results show that the correct classification in both cultures is higher for children playing games in pairs, thus children in pairs are more expressive than individuals. Furthermore, both Pakistani individuals and pairs are more expressive than Dutch ones.