Touchscreens are becoming increasingly widespread in educational games, enhancing the quality of learner experience. Traditional metrics are often used to evaluate various input modalities, including hand and stylus. However, there exists a gap in understanding the cognitive impacts of these modalities during educational gameplay, which can be addressed through brain signal analysis to gain deeper insights into the underlying cognitive function and necessary brain resources for each condition. This facilitates a more precise comparison between conditions. In this study, we compared the brain signal and user experience of using hands and stylus on touchscreens while playing an educational game by analyzing hemodynamic response and self-reported measures. Participants engaged in a Unity-based educational quiz game using both hand and stylus on a touchscreen in a counterbalanced within-subject design. Oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin data were collected using fNIRS, alongside quiz performance scores and standardized and customized user experience questionnaire ratings. Our findings show almost the same performance level with both input modalities, however, the hand requires less oxygen flow which suggests a lower cognitive effort than using a stylus while playing the educational game. Although the result shows that the stylus condition required more neural involvement than the hand condition, there is no significant difference between the use of both input modalities. However, there is a statistically significant difference in self-reported measures that support the findings mentioned above, favoring the hand that enhances understanding of modality effects in interactive educational environments.

翻译：触屏在教育游戏中的应用日益普及，显著提升了学习者的体验质量。传统指标常被用于评估手与触控笔等多种输入方式，但在教育游戏过程中这些方式对认知影响的理解仍存在空白。通过脑信号分析可深入探究每种条件下的潜在认知功能及所需脑资源，从而更精确地比较不同条件间的差异。本研究通过分析血流动力学响应与自我报告数据，比较了在教育游戏中使用手与触控笔两种触屏输入方式时的脑信号与用户体验。参与者采用平衡的受试者内设计，在基于Unity开发的教育问答游戏中分别用手和触控笔操作触屏。研究采用fNIRS采集含氧与脱氧血红蛋白数据，同时记录问答成绩及标准化/定制化用户体验问卷评分。结果表明两种输入方式在表现水平上几乎持平，但手操作所需氧流量更少，提示在教育游戏中手操作的认知负荷低于触控笔。尽管结果显示触控笔条件比手条件需要更多神经参与，但两种输入方式间并无显著差异。不过，自我报告指标存在统计学显著差异，支持了上述发现——更有利于手操作，这深化了交互式教育环境中模态效应的理解。