A Configurable Storytelling System for Emotion Recognition in Children: Design and Pilot Evaluation

Computer games are very popular among children, with serious games being widely used for teaching specific skills and rehabilitation across various age groups. This work presents a configurable, story-based serious game designed to teach emotion recognition to young children (ages 6 to 11) through a peer-assisted learning approach. The system emphasizes pedagogical adaptability, allowing educators to customize content without programming knowledge. Its core innovation lies in structuring collaboration where older children co-create emotion-focused questions and facts for younger peers, operationalizing Vygotsky's social development theory. A pilot study (N=4) demonstrated the system's effectiveness in improving emotion identification, with 75% of participants showing increased engagement with the story's emotional cues. Results indicated successful peer-assisted interaction, where younger children answered most questions posed by older peers and showed critical engagement through fact verification. The findings suggest that this configurable, peer-assisted storytelling approach offers a promising, accessible method for fostering social-emotional learning in educational settings.