The influence of digital educational games on preschool Children's creative thinking

Age is an important factor affecting the development of creative thinking, and digital educational games have great potential in the training of creative thinking for preschool children. However, the effect of digital educational games on the creative thinking of preschool children of different ages is still unclear. In this study, a digital educational game “Thinking Paradise” was specially developed as a training method for preschool children's creative thinking. Including 11 different types of mini-games from 5 different creative thinking forms to train preschool children's creative thinking. 102 children aged 3–6 were divided into 3 groups according to their age, G1 (3–4 years old, N = 34), G2 (4–5 years old, N = 34), G3 (5–6 years old, N = 34). All children were asked to complete the training in the classroom, using a pre-post test design to examine the effects of this digital educational game training on creative thinking. The digital Torrance test is used for pre-test and post-test measurement and is evaluated by five indicators: fluency score, detail score, original score, anti-block score, and title score. The results showed that all indicators of the children after training were significantly improved, and the experiment proved that this digital educational game training could effectively improve the creative thinking of preschool children. Training had different effects on preschool children of different ages, and there were significant differences in the improvement of fluency scores, title scores, and anti-block scores in different age groups. The fluency score of the 3-4-year-old group was significantly improved, and the total score improvement score was close to the maximum value. At the same time, the training significantly improved the title score and anti-block score of the 5-6-year-old children. This study expands on existing knowledge about creative thinking in preschool children, highlighting the need to focus on age differences when using digital educational games to train preschool children's creative thinking. This study can also provide valid evidence for the development of digital educational games in preschool children.