Cognitive Style Affected Students’ Frustration Tolerance and Achievement on Group Face-to-Face Competitive Game

Abstract

In classroom, group competitive game is widely believed to be a motivation-enriching strategy, and has been suggested as a way to stimulate participants’ engagement. However, different students perceive the same competitive activity with different feelings. The more we understand students’ characteristics, the more adaptive support we can provide students. This study aimed to explore the different cognitive styles causing to the influences on the frustration tolerance and achievement through a tablet group competitive board game. In the aspect of cognitive style, the differences between field dependence and field independence were explored, and in the aspect of group competitive game, a face-to-face group competitive board game named “Multiple-Choice Practice Island” as the classroom setting was implemented on tablet as an APP. A pilot study was conducted in which twenty-three 3rd grade students were involved. The results demonstrated that group competitive game can increase the students’ frustration tolerance whether they are field dependent or field independent cognitive style students, and the low-achieving field independent students perceive more learning achievement in the group competitive game.