Intelligent agents, voice and facial recognition applied in videogames in order to stimulate cognitive development of children — A case study of Tictactoe in 3D

Multiple products of the video game industry have been widely used in a variety of educational processes. However, the final creations usually do not include byproducts such as instruments, which may contain appropriate functional aspects, such as pedagogical, technical, and adequate teaching resources. Therefore some video games randomly encourage the cognitive development of children during their use while playing. In order to encourage and stimulate such form of learning, we aimed in this study to establish a methodology procedure by creating a fun video game in 3D, which shall inspire the logical and spatial reasoning of children with ages of about 10 and 11 years. Therefore, we applied an incremental methodology based on the dynamic life cycle of the Xtreme Programming. Furthermore, in order to obtain an attractive environment, we have used techniques like 3D graphics libraries management, image editing, editing and digitizing sound and video, voice pattern recognition, face recognition, modeling and intelligent agents. Being a case study, the mathematical modeling of the TicTacToe in 3D has been optimized, and its computational solution has been obtained using heuristic techniques of Artificial Intelligence. To validate our results, several tests have been performed in public schools. The results demonstrate how cognitive development improves when the applied educational support of a pedagogical humanlike agent shows physical presence within the video game.