Application of a Serious Game for Emotion Elicitation Under Socio-Economic and Trust Based Decision-Making Scenarios for Autistic Adolescents

The relationship between decision-making and emotions has been extensively studied in both theoretical and empirical research. Game Theory-based paradigms utilizing socio-economic and trust-based contexts have been established to elicit specific emotional responses in autistic individuals. Serious games, incorporating cohesive storylines and multiple interactions within these contexts, can serve as engaging tools for emotion elicitation in autistic individuals. As autistic adolescents tend to show higher engagement with games, we aimed to investigate applicability in this population. To achieve this, we developed a mobile serious game that combines four socio-economic and trust-based game paradigms, aiming to evoke specific emotions of varying intensities during different interactions. This paper presents the outcomes of a preliminary experiment involving thirteen participants. The results show that the game’s designed interactions successfully elicited emotional responses aligning with the expectations derived from literature in non-game applications.