Mental well-being makes an important contribution to the quality of people’s lives and consists of personal happiness and the absence of psychological distress(1). Protective factors such as problem solving skills, resilience and the ability to cope with stress can be improved (2) (e.g., programs, education, self development, etc). Increasing a person’s ability to recognise and regulate emotions may increase their resilience which can help protect against mental illness.
Our work at Minda has consistently demonstrated that people living with intellectual disability are adopting technology at an increasing rate. However we have continued to find that many game-based Apps regarding basic emotion education are unsuitable for adults with an intellectual disability as they contain pictures of children or school based examples. We have also found that emotion regulation apps (e.g., mindfulness or guided relaxation) geared towards adults are too complex and lengthy for many adults living with intellectual disability.
To meet this need we have developed Minda’s Fun With Feelings app which consists of three mini-games to support emotion education and regulation for adults with intellectual disability.
Peaceful Park is a virtual wetland scene which provides the opportunity for low key engagement and diversion to assist a person in calming.
Background music plays gently while the user is encouraged at regular intervals to take a deep breath in and out. ‘Hidden’ items in the scene provide interest and a focus for the person to assist in diverting their attention to promote calming.
Marble Golf is a simple matching game based on identification of the emotions happy, sad, scared, and angry. These cartoon based faces display key features from each emotion (e.g., happy – smile).
The user rolls the marble (through either the tilt or swipe function) to match the correct marble with the correct golf hole. Each time a marble is released the voice over labels the emotion (e.g., “Get the happy marble into the happy golf hole”).
This encourages the user to learn to label and recognise the emotions on the marbles through repetition. These marbles are consistent with and used through other mini-games and Minda emotion regulation apps (e.g., Minda My Feelings).
Target Your Feelings builds upon the Marble Golf mini-game by asking the user to match the emotion on the marble face (e.g., happy, sad, scared, or angry) with photographs of adult faces depicting various emotions.
This mini-game encourages generalisation from the cartoon based emotions to recognition of emotions in others.
1. Conder JA, Mirfin-Weitch, BF & Gates, S (2015). Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities 28(6), 572-582.
2. Mann JJ, Apter A, Bertolote J, Beautrais A, Currier D, Haas A… Hendin H (2005). JAMA 294(16), 2064 – 2074.