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"I am disappointed with your results!": The effects of a pedagogical agent's negative affective feedback on mental effort and learning performance

Published: 15 August 2023 Publication History

Abstract

An instructor may express disappointment in the educational milieu when learning effort and performance do not meet expectations. The socio-emotive feedback can signal to learners that more effort is warranted to reduce the gap between the current achievement and optimal expectations. In this study, we examine if a pedagogical agent's expressing disappointment as affective feedback to learners' prior achievement can enhance mental effort and learning performance in a multimedia learning environment. To this end, two experiments were conducted where learners interacted with either the disappointed or neutral agent that teaches enterprise resource planning systems concepts (Experiment 1) and programming algorithm concepts (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 demonstrated that learners had higher transfer performance when a cartoonish female agent expressed disappointment than neutral affective feedback. Experiment 2 found that compared to a neutral expression, disappointment expression by a realistic male agent enhanced invested mental effort for male and female learners but decreased the learning transfer performances among the male learners. This study offers theoretical and practical implications and provides recommendations for future research to examine the potential benefits of a pedagogical agent's negative socio-emotive cues.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Game-Changer NPCs: Leveling-Up Technology Acceptance and Flow in a Digital Learning QuestInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2344917(1-22)Online publication date: 20-May-2024

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  1. "I am disappointed with your results!": The effects of a pedagogical agent's negative affective feedback on mental effort and learning performance

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    ICFET '23: Proceedings of the 2023 9th International Conference on Frontiers of Educational Technologies
    June 2023
    188 pages
    ISBN:9798400707353
    DOI:10.1145/3606150
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Published: 15 August 2023

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    • (2024)Game-Changer NPCs: Leveling-Up Technology Acceptance and Flow in a Digital Learning QuestInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2344917(1-22)Online publication date: 20-May-2024

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