Background: Fear and anxiety in childhood are typically developmental and short-term. However, in some children, the symptoms can develop into anxiety disorders. One of the new methods based on technology in the treatment of anxiety disorders is serious games.
Aim: The present study aims to design and validate the serious game “Winning Mind” based on the CBT model and investigate its effectiveness on children's anxiety.
Methodology: The game is structured in three main stages with several mini-games. Ten professors and experts validated the game through a researcher-developed questionnaire. The research method in the effectiveness section was experimental, with a pre-test and post-test design including a control group (placebo). Among 8-year-old children in Bushehr screened for high anxiety, 48 subjects were selected. 14 (7 girls and 7 boys) were in the experimental group of traditional vision-behavioral therapy, 14 (6 girls and 8 boys) were in the experimental group of the Winning Mind Game, and 14 (7 girls and 7 boys) were in the placebo group, randomly assigned. The experimental group for cognitive-behavioral therapy underwent 8 sessions of group training. The experimental group for the Winning Mind serious game participated in 8 sessions of the game. The placebo group engaged 8 sessions of normal mobile games once a week. The Spence Scale, both the child and parent forms, along with the Children's Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, were utilized during the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up stages to evaluate anxiety levels.
Conclusions: Results indicated that the Winning Mind Game had good content validity (CVR = .92, CVI = .97) and significantly reduced anxiety symptoms in children, reducing tendencies to blame others and increasing receptiveness to different viewpoints, as indicated by the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. The findings also revealed that there was no significant difference in the average post-test scores and 3-month follow-