Cognitive-Affective States in Learning and Impact on Student Behaviors

Cognitive-Affective States in Learning and Impact on student behaviors

The incidence, persistence, and impact of learners’ cognitive–affective states during interactions with three different computer-based learning environments

1 Six Basic emotions by Ekman

Fear Anger Happiness Sadness Disgust Surprise

2 Six Basic emotions by Ekman

Fear Anger Common emotions from facial expressions Happiness Sadness Disgust Surprise

3 Six Basic emotions by Ekman

Fear Anger Common emotions from facial expressions Happiness Hard to apply in some context, e.g. learning Sadness Disgust Surprise

4 Affect and Cognition

There is a complex relationship between cognition and emotion (Mandler, 1984)

• Some emotions requires cognitive interpretation of the stimulus • Cognitive activities also operates throughout the experience of emotion

5 Cognitive-Affective states in Learning Aka, cognitive-emotive states

Boredom Confusion Delight Engaged Concentration Frustration Surprise

6 Study Cognitive-Affective states in learning is difﬁcult

Affect is complex for people from different cultures, ages, and genders

Learning domain’s impact on affect — literacy learning, math learning, etc

Pedagogical strategy’s impact on affect — dialog tutor, peer-like companion, etc

7 Three Studies with different learning environment Study 1 Study 2 Study 3 Learning Domain: Learning Domain: Learning Domain: Computer Literacy Ruby Goldberg Puzzels Algebra Learning strategy: Learning strategy: Learning strategy: Virtual Tutor Software with hints Software Learning Assistant Subjects: Subjects: Subjects: College Students High School Students High School Students

8 Generalize Across Three Studies With Different Learning Environment

• Similar encoding methods for cognitive-affective states labeling

• Same analyses carried out for three studies individually

• Aggregated states across three states analyzed for overview

9 Hypotheses / Research Question

• What are the most prevalent cognitive-affective states students is experiencing during the learning session? • What is the difference in how states persist over time? What states follows the “vicious cycle”? • Is engaged concentration more persistent than others? • What is the impact of student’s cognitive-affective states on the way they interact with the system?

10 Q1 Most Common Cognitive-Affective States Among Three Studies

Engaged Concentration

Confusion

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11 Q2 What’s the most persistent state?

Measurement of Persistence Student being in the same state for two successive observations

Result Within all three studies, boredom showed persistence

12 Q3 Cognitive-Affective states’ impact on user behavior

User Behavior Metric Gaming the system Result Boredom is the only state out of the set of states studied, that lead student to game the system Gaming the system is known to be associated with poor learning in some learning environment

13 Discussion

• Boredom is the closest non-transitory “mood”; once a student is bored, it’s hard to transit out of boredom naturally • Boredom leads to bad learning behavior that could disrupt the experience • Contrary to the common affect used in educational technology, (e.g, frustration), more non-transitory yet “disruptive to learning” affect should be the primary affective state as an affective cue for intervention • Researchers should be cautious about what affect is being detected and responded. Some affect can be processed by students themselves, and thus should receive less attention in the design of educational technology.

14 Why is this paper interesting to me?

• The generalization of cognitive-affective states’ impact across different learning environment • Used persistence of cognitive-affective states to investigate how affect changes over time when affective intervention is not present • Studied the behavioral impact of different cognitive-affective states