Integrative Literature Review

Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 871-877 DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.324

2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 871-877

REVISTA ARGENTINA

DE CLÍNICA PSICOLÓGICA

871

APPLICATION OF GAME ACTIVITIES IN MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION OF KINDERGARTENS BASED ON COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Na Yao, Liping Wang*

Abstract

Game activities are the most effective means of mental health education in kindergartens. This paper mainly explores how to design game activities based on cognitive psychology, and apply them in mental health education of kindergartens. First, the psychological characteristics of young children were analyzed from the perspective of cognitive psychology. Then, game activities were designed based on these characteristics, and verified through a case study. The children’s behaviors before and after the game activities were compared in details. The results show that the game activities designed based on cognitive psychology accord with the psychological characteristics of kindergarten children of all ages, meeting their psychological needs and mental health demands; moreover, the designed game activities can correct the problematic behaviors of young children and promote the children’s cognition of behavior. The research results provide a reference for mental health education in kindergartens.

Key words: Cognitive Psychology, Game Activities, Mental Health Education, Psychological Characteristics.

Received: 18-05-19 | Accepted: 12-08-19

INTRODUCTION

When studying the psychology of criminals, Professor Li Meijin of People’s Public Security University of China divides the criminal population into “dangerous personality” type and “dangerous heart knot” type. “Dangerous personality” type criminals are mostly caused by problems in the process of mental cognitive structure and personality development in their congenital or early years. Hence, at the most important stage of the formation of psychological cognitive structure and personality in infant aged 0-6 years (Renaud & Suissa, 1989), it is mainly dependent on family education and kindergarten school education, Cognitive knowledge and experience acquired during this period lay the foundation for life -long learning (Donaldson Vollmer, Krous et al., 2011). The

Tangshan Normal University, Tangshan,063000, China. E-Mail: [email protected]

physical and mental development of infants aged 0-3 years mainly depends on family education, while the physical and mental development of infants aged 3-6 years is greatly influenced by the kindergarten environment. Their strong physique, coordinated actions, emotional self - control, good habits and independence are the main factors for judging children’s physical and mental health (Nacheret, Garcia -Sanjuan, & Jaen, 2016).

Therefore, mental health education in kindergarten aims at actively responding to the children’s inner psychological needs, setting up the corresponding mental health education curriculum according to the mental and physical cognitive characteristics of children aged 3 -6 years, and cultivating the preschool children’s mental and physical health development, so that they have positive emotional regulation, strong quality of consciousness, positive behavior and good social communication skills (Larson , Russ, Nelson et al., 2015). The quality of mental health education directly affects the development of

NA YAO, LIPING WANG

2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 871-877

REVISTA ARGENTINA

DE CLÍNICA PSICOLÓGICA

872

children’s mental health and plays an important role in the formation of 3-6-year-old children’s personality.

China’s kindergarten education concepts and management methods are relatively backward and traditional. In addition, the shortage of kindergarten teachers and professional mental health teachers leads to the current situation of a teacher-student ratio of 1:15 in kindergarten. Compared with a teacher-student ratio of 1:5 in foreign kindergartens, kindergarten teachers in China have to undertake too many tasks in daily learning activities. In order to unify the management for time saving, early kindergarten teachers often label “problem children” on children whose personality behavior is special. At the same time, these children are classified as the focus of mental health education (Jones , Greenberg, & Crowley, 2015).

Due to the lack of professional mental health teachers, kindergarten teachers are unable to carry out mental health education from the perspective of psychology. In order to better discipline young children and highlight the effectiveness of mental health education or to cope with the supervision of higher education departments, many children who don’t really have mental problems are included in the correction scope of mental health problems. For example, slow eating, dietary bias, willfulness and cowardice, or children’s behavior characteristics that will naturally disappear in the psychological development with age are taken as children’s psychological problems to be corrected, which will only deepen the children’s impression on the so-called “problem behavior”, and even reinforces the behavior into internalized personality. For this kind of personality problem that will disappear naturally, the education focus shall be changed to correct the problem behavior by the way of guiding and encouraging (for example, game activities). Constructive mental health education is carried out from the perspective of children’s inner psychological cognition.

This study constructs game activities from the professional angle of cognitive psychology, analyzes children’s real psychological problems and behaviors, carries out psychological intervention and correction pertinently, and promotes the children to acquire the psychological self-confidence, satisfaction and security through happy game activities. At the same time, it can promote children’s

interpersonal communication ability, team cooperation ability, language expression ability, logical thinking ability and emotion regulation ability through collective game activities, so that young children develop in a better direction from the mutual coordination of physiological and psychological interaction.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITIVE

PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MENTAL OF KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN

Starting from the children’s cognitive psychology, it is found that children have a specific sensitivity to a certain thing at a specific period (Feshbach & Price, 1984). During this period, targeted guidance shall be conducted

(Melhuish, 2011). Children’s body and mind

are satisfied and supported with their curiosity, desire, exploration, self-confidence, satisfaction, and safe feeling, which will further st imulate deeper exploration and cognition. At the same time, they can gain the learning effect with twice the effort. First, we should understand the psychological characteristics of kindergarten children of different ages, as shown in Figure 1, which aims at constructing game activities, correcting so-called problem behaviors through game activities imperceptibly, and promoting the cognition of correct behaviors.

Figure 1. The exclusive psychological characteristics of different ages

Strong curiosity psychology

Prominent group psychology

Unconscious imitation psychology

Emotion control psychology

Attachment psychology

Lively and active love to

play psychology

Image thinking

Intentional behavior

Love to learn questions

Abstract thinking

The expression of the story

Intentional behavior increased

The initial formation of personality

4-5

Year

old

5-6

Year

old

3-4

Year

old

Psychological

characteristics

APPLICATION OF GAME ACTIVITIES IN MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION OF KINDERGARTENS BASED ON COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 871-877

REVISTA ARGENTINA

DE CLÍNICA PSICOLÓGICA

873

The psychological cognitive characteristics of 3-4-year-old preschool children have strong curiosity psychology, attachment psychology, prominent group psychology, unconscious imitation psychology and emotion -dominated psychology. The behavior of children in this age group is not controlled by brain rationality, and it belongs to the behavior dominated by primitive psychological needs and is greatly influenced by the external environment (Freitag , Feineis-Matthews, Valerian et a l., 2012). For example, 3-year-old children who just go to the kindergarten will cry to find their mothers when seeing other children crying to look for their mothers. This emotional control psychology will cause group cry, which is the most annoying for caregivers. Attachment psychology is the attachment to fosters. This kind of attachment psychology is obvious in the separation on the morning for 3-year-old children who just go to kindergarten. The unconscious imitation psychology, group psychology, the m utual infection of anxiety emotion of 3 -4-year-old children control the collective insecurity of the whole small-class children, which increases the workload and work intensity of kindergarten teachers. Under the condition of abnormal teacher-student ratio, kindergarten teachers may make cognitive judgment or behavior which is unfavorable to children’s mental health when they are subjectively tired.

Preschoolers aged 4-5 years, compared with the preschoolers aged 3-4 year, have changed a lot. Their inner potentials are released and their psychological cognitive characteristics are lively and active, image thinking and intentional behavior (Kraybill & Bell, 2013). Young children of this age are energetic, lively and active. Their cognition of things is no longer aimless wait-and- see, but actively participation in guiding the game process like a director to guide and practice the characters in the game. The 4 -5- year-old preschoolers have accumulated a certain amount of things cognitive experience, and the individual’s output behaviors begin to be controlled by the brain, so that they can rely on the existing mental cognitive structure of the brain to carry out image-specific thinking activities, and be able to listen to adult requests and suggestions. This is reflected in intentional behaviors in attention, memory and imagination, more intentional concentration in listening to stories and remembering the characteristics of things, and more imaginative activities and game

activities. The psychological cognitive characteristics of

preschoolers aged 5-6 years are mainly manifested in their interest in learning and asking, their abstract thinking ability and their strong desire to express their stories, increased intentional behaviors and initial personality formation (Warman & Cohen, 2000). Unlike the thirst for knowledge of 3-4-year-old children under the psychological effect of curiosity, 5 -6- year-old children are no longer satisfied with the superficial knowledge when learning and asking. They will spontaneously observe and explore related knowledge related knowledge of things at a deeper level under the joint action of active thinking (Jobe, 2003). The abstract logic thinking of 5-6-year-old children begin to develop, and they can carry out thinking activities of generalization thinking and logic abstraction. For example, they can classify objects according to their function and scope (Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2009).

MENTAL HEALTH CURRICULUM SETTING BASED

ON THE GUIDANCE OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Direction of constructing game activities based on children’s cognitive psychology

According to the psychological cognitive characteristics of 3-year-old children, the game activities developing children’s cognitive ability are constructed. For example, based on the children’s curiosity about the surrounding things, the daily objects of interest are printed on the drawings and cut into two, three or four pieces. Then the children are asked to combine freely to obtain the complete puzzle, and say the name of the thing. Then we use the group psychology to construct game activities to develop the children’s interpersonal communication ability. The children are asked to exchange the puzzles or things in their hands, to name the things in their hands, or to describe and ask questions about the features of the things, or to describe the color, shape, softness, transparency of the things. Besides, we can ask heuristic questions about the function and use of the objects. Combining the unconscious imitation psychology, we can cons truct game activities of developing children’s living habits and rules by organizing children to wash hands and feed fruits for dolls, and let children imitate adults to dress dolls, wear shoes and hats, and fasten buttons for dolls.

NA YAO, LIPING WANG

2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 871-877

REVISTA ARGENTINA

DE CLÍNICA PSICOLÓGICA

874

Table 1. Construct the game according to the psychological characteristics of 3 -4 children

Age Psychological

characteristics Game setting

3-4 years old

Strong curiosity psychology

New thing puzzles, light clay making (hand clay painting, animal clay model, etc.), leaf puzzle and other cognitive game activities

Prominent group psychology

The eagle catches the chicken (children take turns to be the eagle and the chicken, the teacher does the chicken mother)

Unconscious imitation psychology

Act out a picture book story

Table 2. Construct the game according to the psychological characteristics of 4 -5 children Age Psychological characteristics Game setting

4-5 years

old

Lively and active love to play psychology and image thinking

Go out to play in order to know nature, the garden in the campus, insects, flowers and trees things cognition

Intentional behavior Role-playing game activities (e.g., playing doctor to see a patient,

playing cook to cook, etc.)

Table 3. The exclusive psychological characteristics of different ages

Age Psychological

characteristics Game setting

5-6 years old

Knowledge discovery Books on “a hundred thousand whys”

Abstract logic Mathematical game activities such as classification of things, number

graphics game activities Expressive desire for

language Picture book story description

According to the psychological cognitive

characteristics of 4-5-year-old children, they are guided to observe their life through game activities or multiple scenes in their development stage of intentional behaviors. They can constantly get growth in insig ht in the observation and enrich psychological cognitive structure with a large number of specific images experience while developing focus, memory, thinking organization, imagination and language skills. The curiosity psychology of 4 -5-year-old children is expressed as “Hundred Thousand Whys” questions in lively and active activities. The cognitive psychology with high thirst for knowledge and imagination at this stage is utilized to construct game activities to develop the expression and creativity of chi ldren. Moderate help, spiritual encouragement and affirmation will be given to increase children’s self-confidence, satisfaction, pleasure and stimulate their desire to recreate, so as to stimulate children’s positive and healthy mental conditions.

Although the logical thinking ability of 5 -6- year-old children is relatively superficial, their thinking mode and thinking ability have undergone qualitative changes, providing important psychological cogni tive ability for

entering primary school learning activities. According to the psychological characteristics of 5-6-year-old children with a strong desire to express their stories and combining the development of logical thinking and the accumulation of language words, we can construct story-telling game activities to satisfy the children’s desire to express their stories, thereby helping them to build up self -confidence and develop ability of telling stories in a coherent language, providing the basis for entering primary school to learn written language.

In accordance with children’s cognitive psychology, we construct game activities that are easy to be accepted by children. On the one hand, the children’s advantageous behaviors such as focus and creativity are optimized. On the other hand, the children’s problem behaviors considered by the adult are improved, and children’s internal stress and anxiety are released from game activities, and they gain pleasure and self-confidence from game activities, which enables children to reconstruct the psychological cognitive structure in the game activities with autonomy and participation, and develop the output behavior in a positive direction. Figure 2 shows a flowchart of

APPLICATION OF GAME ACTIVITIES IN MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION OF KINDERGARTENS BASED ON COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 871-877

REVISTA ARGENTINA

DE CLÍNICA PSICOLÓGICA

875

constructing game activities based on the children’s cognitive psychology.

Figure 2. Construct the flow chart of game activities based on children’s cognitive psychology

Psychological

characteristics

of children

Game

Behavior

advantages

Behavior

disadvantages improve

Optimize

Healthy

psychological

feelings

Normative

behavior

output

3-6-year-old preschool children own the

absorptive mind so that they can absorb a large amount of input information from the surrounding environment through the sense organs in a conscious state. Children have different physical and mental development characteristic in different age groups, that is, each age group has a specific psychological cognitive structure. We should carry out mental health education according to the specific psychological cognitive structure, and construct appropriate game activities to guide the children to explore and learn freely and stimulate the children’s internal potentials, so as to acquire self-confidence, security and concentration, creativity and good interpersonal skills.

Guide the direction of mental health

education according to the cognitive psychological model of children

Every child’s cognition of the world is based on his/her acquired knowledge structure, which constructs the world he/she sees, and guides the output of his/her own behavior. The abnormal behaviors behind the problem children depend on the knowledge structure acquired from the living environment. The purpose of mental health education curriculum in kindergarten is to reconstruct the children’s cognitive structure through game activities and make them de velop into positive behaviors. It is significant to let the children have the autonomy and the participation feeling. Positive absorption of active participation is greater than the passive discipline teaching. The trial and error learning game setting is advantageous to the mental development.

Children’s thinking mode and behavior mode

are influenced by the original psychological cognition mode and children of different age groups in kindergarten have different acceptance and absorption abilities for the s ame game activities, so the construction of game activities should be in accordance with children’s psychological cognitive structure.

As shown in Figure 3, the orange pentagram represents the psychological cognitive structure of 3-4-year-old children, i.e., cognitive models such as emotion, unconscious imitation, and prominent group psychology. The orange snowflake square represents the psychological cognitive structure of 4-5-year-old children, namely, the psychological structure of active exploration, intentional behavior and image thinking. The orange hexagon represents the psychological cognitive structure of 5 -6-year-old children, namely, the psychological structure of interest in learning and asking, abstract logical thinking, the desire of language expression, and increased intentional behavior. Under the same input of game activities, children of different age groups have different emphasis and ability development and exercise directions, and children of the same age group also have different cognitive results according to their own psychological cognitive structure. Therefore, kindergarten teachers only need to give children a more relaxed, free and respectful learning environment, so that children can maximize the development of their internal potentials without interference.

Figure 3. Cognitive models of children of different ages

3-4 year old

5-6 year old

4-5 year old

Input model Cognitive model Restoring model

NA YAO, LIPING WANG

2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 871-877

REVISTA ARGENTINA

DE CLÍNICA PSICOLÓGICA

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The same input information is compiled through different psychological cognitive structures, and each person reprocesses the input information according to his/her own existing knowledge structure. The obtained result depends on the original experience and knowledge inventory. Children of different age groups reprocess the same input model, and the obtained cognitive remodeling model has the characteristics common to each age group. Therefore, it is necessary to construct game activities pertinently for chi ldren of different ages.

The important period for the development of children’s ability to understand psychological emotion is 4-5 years old in the middle class of kindergarten. Thus, constructing game activities in mental health in kindergarten should aim at the cognitive psychology of 4 -5 years old children in the sensitive period of emotion understanding. It is easier to promote the development of young children’s emotional understanding by setting up game activities with role exchange and emotional alignment, and it is easier to establish friendly communication modes among young children, and to understand other people’s behaviors and make appropriate responses, thus reducing the number and frequency of attacks.

CASE STUDY ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF

GAME ACTIVITIES IN COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

From the perspective of children’s own cognitive psychology, the psychological problems of children are mainly manifested as lack of sense of security and self -confidence, which leads to shyness, self-abasement and even depression. Adults usually analyze children’s behavior problems from the perspective of cognitive psychology of children’s ability because adults think that children’s ability is insufficient. Children’s learning exploration behavior, independent behavior and trial and error behavior are deprived, which results in children’s weak ability to resist setbacks, and weak self-confidence and independent learning ability. The problem behavior of emotional regulation disorder comes from the improper educational method. Excessive doting education will cause the children to be willful and self - respecting. Emotional disorder and aggressive behavior appear when their desire is not satisfied.

Lack of sense of security will lead to anxiety, crying, cowardice and self-abasement. Artificial hindrance deprives young children of their desire and curiosity, fear of failure, and aggression caused by abnormal emotional regulation which come from the deviation of children’s psychological cognitive structure. When the children’s inner needs are concerned and satisfied, their behaviors are enthusiastic, loving and positive. On the contrary, when the children’s inner needs are not concerned or ignored, their emotional color is black and negative and their behaviors are prone to appear anger, attack, and destruction.

This study observes and records the frequency of occurrence of anxiety behavior and the duration of attentiveness, and the period of data record is four months, one semester. A total of 80 groups of sample values are obtained and the trend map of the psychol ogical behavior improved by game activities is shown in Figure 4. It is found that constructing game activities in accordance with cognitive psychology meets the psychological needs of the children of the corresponding age group, and the abilities required for game activities accord with the mental ability range of the children. Children obtain sense of satisfaction and security through pleasant game activities, thus reducing their inner anxiety. When just going to kindergarten, children frequently appear anxiety behaviors. They gradually obtain emotional stability as shown by a solid pink line in Figure 4. Later, their learning focus gradually increases as shown by the blue dotted line in Figure 4.

Figure 4. A chart of mental behavior improved by game activity

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Concentration

F r e q

u e n

c y /D

a y

Test times

Anxiety behavior

C o n c e n tr

a ti

o n /T

im e

0

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

APPLICATION OF GAME ACTIVITIES IN MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION OF KINDERGARTENS BASED ON COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 871-877

REVISTA ARGENTINA

DE CLÍNICA PSICOLÓGICA

877

CONCLUSIONS

This study constructs game activities from the professional angle of cognitive psychology, and explores the relationship between mental health education in kindergarten and the effect of game activities on children’s mental health, and draws conclusions as follows:

(1) Based on the psychological cognitive characteristics of children, this study summarizes the psychological needs of kindergarten children of all ages, and understands the real mental health demands behind the problem behaviors.

(2) Based on children’s cognitive psychology, this study constructs appropriate game activities pertinently according to the psychological cognitive characteristics of different ages, to stimulate the children’s inner potentials purposefully.

(3) According to the children’s cognit ive psychology model, the mental health education curriculum in kindergarten is set up, and the children’s cognitive structure is reconstructed through game activities, so as to make them develop towards positive behavior.

The empirical study shows that th e construction of game activities based on cognitive psychology has positive effect on children’s psychology and behavior.

Acknowledgement

Social science fund project of Hebei province, Study on the gamification model of construction activity curricula in kindergartens, No: HB18JY054.

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