The Role of Gender on the Associations among Children’s Attitudes, Mathematics Knowledge, Digital Game Use, Perceptions of Affordances, and Achievement

This study explored associations among children’s prior attitudes, prior mathematics knowledge, and frequency of digital game use, with children’s perceptions of game affordances, and transfer to out-of-game performance when interacting with digital math games, with respect to gender. Participants were 187 children (ages 8–12). An SEM mediation path analysis using MPLUS software showed significant direct effects for all pathways for all children, and significant indirect effects on all pathways for male children and five of six pathways for female children. More favorable attitudes, prior math knowledge, and perception of the helping affordances were associated with increased posttest performance, while increased frequency of digital game use and stronger perception of the hindering affordances was associated with decreased posttest performance. The model showed stronger connections for male children between frequency of digital game use, prior mathematics knowledge, and hindering affordances to the posttest, while female children showed stronger connections between attitude and perception of helping affordances to the posttest.