Effects of adaptive difficulty adjustment-based gamification on young children's cognitive development and enjoyment experience

Early childhood is an important stage of cognitive development. Based on the theory of embodied cognition, touchscreen devices have become increasingly prevalent in boosting the cognitive abilities of young children in the context of technological development. However, due to inadequate instructional design, traditional touchscreen devices may also struggle to ensure interaction and engagement in early childhood education. Therefore, this study proposed a gamification approach to maintain students' learning interest and introduced an adaptive difficulty adjustment mechanism to conform to students' cognitive development. To explore the effectiveness of the adaptive difficulty adjustment-based gamification approach, a quasi-experimental study was conducted with 25 young children in two groups. The results showed that the current approach had a positive effect on children's cognitive skills but failed to increase enjoyment of the experience, complemented by teachers' and parents' feelings about and experiences of the two different approaches by analysing interview data.