Leveling up advertising literacy! Investigating the cognitive and motivational effectiveness of a digital game for learning aimed at improving children's advertising literacy

The study investigates both the cognitive and the motivational learning effects of a digital game for learning aimed at enhancing the advertising literacy of children. A four-level between-subjects experiment was set up in a classroom environment among 113 students from 9 to 12 years old. It compared between a control condition where participants received no intervention, a condition where participants received a more traditional, passive intervention (i.e. a digital informational brochure), and two conditions in which the participants received the game-based intervention, with participants in one condition playing the game for learning alone and participants in the other condition playing the game together with a classmate. The results show that after one exposure, the cognitive effects of the game-based and traditional interventions are similar. However, the game for learning had a significantly higher motivational effectiveness than the traditional intervention, especially when the game was played together with a classmate. The study investigates both the cognitive and the motivational learning effects of a digital game for learning aimed at enhancing the advertising literacy of children. A four-level between-subjects experiment was set up in a classroom environment among 113 students from 9 to 12 years old. It compared between a control condition where participants received no intervention, a condition where participants received a more traditional, passive intervention (i.e. a digital informational brochure), and two conditions in which the participants received the game-based intervention, with participants in one condition playing the game for learning alone and participants in the other condition playing the game together with a classmate. The results show that after one exposure, the cognitive effects of the game-based and traditional interventions are similar. However, the game for learning had a significantly higher motivational effectiveness than the traditional intervention, especially when the game was played together with a classmate.