Mapping Behavioral Mechanisms in Gamified Language Teaching: A 30-Year Bibliometric Review Using CiteSpace

Gamified language teaching has expanded rapidly, yet evidence remains uneven because studies often report outcomes without specifying the psychological processes and boundary conditions that generate observable learning behaviors. This 30-year bibliometric review maps research published from 1995 to 2025 using records from the Web of Science Core Collection. CiteSpace was used to examine collaboration pattern, co-occurrence trajectory, and document co-citation clustering with timeline views. Results show a technology-led and highly interdisciplinary field with a persistent core to periphery collaboration structure and thematic fragmentation across education, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. Keyword and co-citation analyses indicate a shift from feasibility-oriented applications toward mechanism focused work that links game design conditions to motivation, engagement, and skill specific language outcomes, with increasing attention to mobile platforms, learning analytics, and immersive modalities. While self-determination theory (SDT) remains the most visible explanatory lens, the intellectual base also recurrently invokes social comparison, achievement goals, self-efficacy and expectancy value beliefs, reinforcement and feedback, habit formation, and achievement emotions. Building on these signals, we synthesize a three-module model that connects technology-mediated design conditions, psychological mechanisms, and learning outcomes, and we provide a mechanism comparison map that translates common game elements into competing testable propositions and behavioral signatures under explicit boundary conditions. The review offers a behaviorally grounded agenda for cumulative theory development and evidence-informed design in language education.