Observing and Measuring the Flow Emotional State in Children Interacting with the MIROR Platform

This paper introduces a study aiming to measure the Flow state (Csikszentmihalyi 1996) of children playing with the MIRORImprovisation prototype, an Interactive Reflexive Musical System (IRMS) implemented in the framework of the EU-ICT Project MIROR-Music Interaction Relaying On Reflexion. The IRMS have been defined as Flow machine, thanks to their ability to imitate the style of the human playing a keyboard (Pachet 2006). The Flow grid was created with the software Observer (Noldus©). The basic idea of this grid is that the observer did not register the flow state but rather the “variables” and the “intensity” of each variable. The presence of Flow state is instead measured by means an automatic process of the Observer based on several constraints: according to Csikszentmihalyi, when the level of all variables is higher, the presence of Flow is indicated. 24 children (4 and 8 years old) carried out 3 sessions playing a keyboard in 3 consecutive days. In every session, all children played the keyboard with and without the MIROR-Impro, alone and with a friend. One group of children played the system with set-up Same and another group with set-up Very different (with set-up Same the system's reply is more similar to the child's input). The video collected were analysed with the Flow grid. The results show that the Flow state is higher when the children play with MIROR-Impro, with set-up Same and with 8 years old children. The difference between sessions is not significant. These results would support the hypothesis that the IRMS and the reflexive interaction can generate an experience of well-being and creativity. The Flow grid worked in effective way and it was possible to indicate some aspects of the system to be improved. Some limitations have been discussed for further adjustments of the grid.