Peer-reviewed article
Beyond Saying “Gracias”: Enhancing the Understanding and Expression of Gratitude in Elementary School Children through a Game-Based App
Yvonne Gómez, Gordon Ingram, Sonia Carrillo, Juan Pablo Molano, Mariana Perdomo-García et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This study tested a educational game app, Grati y la Isla de la Gratitud, designed to teach gratitude to children aged 9 to 12. It used a quasi-experimental design with 304 children from public and private schools, comparing an intervention group with a control group. Children who used the game gave more complex definitions of gratitude and named a wider variety of ways to express it. Interviews with 17 children suggested they could spot gratitude in the game's stories and turn it into personal plans for daily life. Children reported high satisfaction with the game, though some found certain mini-games difficult.
Key points
- The intervention group showed significantly more complex understandings of gratitude than the control group.
- Their definitions included more conceptual elements: benefactor, beneficiary, benefit and effort.
- They reported a greater variety of gratitude expressions: verbal, concrete and connective.
- In interviews with 17 children, participants transferred what they learned into personalized 'gratitude plans' for everyday life.
- Children reported high satisfaction and perceived educational value, but some noted challenges with specific mini-games.
Limitations
The abstract does not name the study countries, give effect sizes, or say how long the effects last. The interview findings come from only 17 children, and the abstract does not say whether groups were randomly assigned.
Abstract
The cultivation of character strengths like gratitude can enhance children’s well-being and prosocial behavior. While school-based interventions exist, there is a lack of rigorously evaluated, gamified tools that explicitly teach gratitude to preadolescent children. This study evaluated the effectiveness of Grati y la Isla de la Gratitud , an educational game to enhance children’s understanding and expression of gratitude. Using a mixed-methods, quasi-experimental design, we worked with 304 children (aged 9–12) from public and private schools. Pre-post and post-only measures demonstrated that the intervention group displayed significantly more complex understandings of gratitude, incorporating more conceptual elements (benefactor, beneficiary, benefit, effort) in their definitions and reporting a greater variety of gratitude expressions (verbal, concrete, connective) compared to the control group. Qualitative analysis of interviews with a subset of 17 participants showed that children successfully identified gratitude elements and expressions within the game’s narratives and transferred them to personalized “gratitude plans” for everyday life. Participants also reported high levels of satisfaction and perceived educational value from the game, although some noted challenges with specific mini-games. The findings indicate that a gamified intervention can improve preadolescents’ conceptual and practical understanding of gratitude, offering a digital tool for character education in school settings.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Grati y la Isla de la Gratitud, an educational game-based app to enhance children's understanding and expression of gratitude
- Population
- 304 children aged 9-12 from public and private schools; 17 of them interviewed
Key finding
The intervention group gave significantly more complex definitions of gratitude, with more conceptual elements (benefactor, beneficiary, benefit, effort), than the control group.
Gómez et al. · OpenAlex · 3 Oct 2026