The effects of mind and intelligence games on 6th grade students' problem solving, social skills and attitudes towards lesson

In the world of education, mind and intelligence games are considered as one of the important activities that affect and develop many development areas of students and enable them to acquire new skills. This study aimed to examine the effects of mind games on students' problem solving, social skills and attitudes towards computer lessons. In addition, it was aimed to determine the emotions and thoughts that mind and intelligence games will create on students. In this study, a sequential explanatory design, one of the mixed research method designs, was used. A quasi-experimental design was used in the quantitative dimension of the study. In the qualitative dimension of the research, the interview technique was preferred to learn the students' thoughts about the application carried out in the Information Technologies and Software course. This study was conducted with sixth grade students studying in a secondary school in Mut district of Mersin province in 2022-2023. 44 students participated in the research, 21 in the experimental group and 23 in the control group. The students in the study group are 11 and 12 years old, 25 of them (56%) are girls and 19 of them (44%) are boys. During the data collection process, Problem Solving Inventory for Children, Social Skills Scale, and Attitude Scale Towards Computer Lessons were administered to the students as pre-test and post-test. Two weeks after the post-test, an interview form about mind and intelligence games was applied to the students in the group where the experimental process was applied. 12 different mind and intelligence games were played with the experimental group students for two hours a week for 6 weeks (12 hours in total). Control group students continued their lessons with the current lesson method without playing games. The pretests of the experimental and control groups were analyzed with the and it was seen that the groups were equivalent to each other. According to the findings obtained at the end of the research, the sub-factors of the problem-solving inventory for children and problem-solving skills post-test scores of the experimental group were found to be higher than the post-test scores of the control group. According to the findings obtained from the social skills scale, the post-test scores of the experimental group were found to be higher than the post-test scores of the control group. When the attitude scale data towards the computer course was examined, no significant differences were found between the post-test scores of the experimental and control groups. When the application results were examined, it was observed that while mind and intelligence games affected the students' problem solving and social skills, they did not affect their attitudes towards the computer course. When the interviews conducted at the end of the application were examined, students stated that they had fun playing mind and intelligence games and that they found these games useful.It is thought that students can play mind and intelligence games to improve their problem solving and social skills.