See, Touch, and Feel: Enhancing Young Children's Empathy Learning Through a Tablet Game

Abstract

ABSTRACTOngoing research is providing new insights into the biological rudiments of empathy and its neurobiological underpinnings. There is also growing awareness that tablet technology, when used educationally and ethically, can aid adolescents and young‐adults' empathic learning. However, there has been little attempt globally to translate this new knowledge into the learning and teaching of empathy in early years education. This small‐scale study aimed at enhancing 3–6‐year‐olds' empathy by designing a tablet game and evaluating its developmental impact by combining teachers' observation with pre‐electroencephalogram (EEG) and post‐EEG. Children in one Australian preschool, were invited to (1) attend to and perceive emotionally salient events in a story, (2) actively share the emotions of the characters identified, and (3) take others' perspectives, reasoning why a given emotion arises within the context. Repeated measures analysis of both EEG and observation data indicate that interacting with the tablet game enhanced participating preschoolers' empathic learning.