Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure.
But yes, that part stood out to me too. "Kids will get bored and start learning". Says who? What if they don't?
Most of them are "designed" by the market, not
psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure.
I'd say the answer is "all of them, but in different ways"
I was homeschooled until high school and I had a tremendous amount of freedom in my learning after I had gotten the harder and less interesting subjects out of the way (for me, spelling and creative writing).
I graduated nearly at the top of my class, but I hated how high school felt like prison. No free speech. Led by incompetent adults. Some of these adults went on power trips. The school system is broken, at least it was for me.
College is fine though, surprisingly. Maybe it was just my high school that was terrible...
Just having 100 users playing your game and watching what makes them open the app again can easily be considered a psychological experiment, though in the tech business they are probably more often referred to as just "user testing".