Construção do RPG de mesa “Social Heroes” enquanto tecnologia educativa para desenvolver habilidades sociais em crianças

Abstract

Social skills (HS) are related to the set of emitted in interpersonal contexts, which enable greater gains and lesser losses of reinforcers in social interactions. Learned from childhood, especially from family members and at school, they are essential to ensure a more pleasant social life. Difficulty in interacting with peers, for example, can result in deficits in psychosocial development, such as a greater tendency to episodes of depression and low self-esteem. Cooperative games, such as the role-playing game (RPG) of the table, have been identified as promising intervention tools to develop SH in children. Thus, this research aimed to build a tabletop RPG, to be applied by third parties, with a narrative that brings situations aimed at the development of children's social skills to make friends. They are: greeting, offering help, praising, asking personal questions, starting and maintaining a conversation. In the narrative, each of these skills is represented by 1) a city; 2) a magic item (gem); and 3) a monster. The contingency planning was based on behavioral science principles and procedures, such as differential reinforcement, modeling and modeling. Furthermore, to help guide the narrative, the entire game is aimed directly at the narrator/master. They are: scene background, challenge time, dice roll time, GMing tip, GM reminder and planned contingency situation. The results show that, in addition to target behaviors, the narrative also brings situations that favor the development of other important skills such as problem solving, empathy and cooperation. The limitations of the study point to the impossibility, due to the context of social distancing related to the COVID-19 pandemic, of experimentally applying the manual developed in order to verify its practical effects.