Abstract

Can positive emotions experienced during multimedia learning facilitate cognitive processing and improve cognitive and affective outcomes? 118 college students were randomly assigned to four experimental treatment conditions created by two design factors for the induction of positive v. neutral emotions, (1) by means of a self-referencing mood induction procedure, and (2) through the emotional design of the learning material. Results showed that the emotional design of the materials can induce positive emotions in learners, and that these positive emotions improved cognitive learning outcomes, motivation, satisfaction and perception toward the materials. The study suggests that emotional design should be considered an important factor in the design of educational materials. Can positive emotions facilitate cognitive processing and improve cognitive and affective outcomes in multimedia learning? Effects of emotions on human behavior can be seen in all aspects of our livesfrom advertisement to political campaigns and from personal interactions to professional communication. Positive emotions in particular are attributed long lasting effects on the personal growth of individuals and their social and emotional well-being (Fredrickson, 2001). When it comes to designing educational experiences, however, little is known about how the emotional impact of learning materials on the learner may affect learning outcomes. In the present study, we therefore investigate whether multimedia learning environments can be designed to induce positive emotions in learners, and whether these positive emotions enhance comprehension of the multimedia materials and facilitate transfer of the new knowledge. On the most fundamental level, hypotheses on the impact of emotions on learning are based on the definition of emotions and their effect. Form a cognitive perspective, emotions are generated by the individual's judgment about the world and initiated by an individual's appraisal of his or her circumstances, and the experience of emotions includes various cognitive components including the activating appraisal, subsequent desires, and intentions (e.g., EMOTIONAL DESIGN March 29, 2010 2 There is indication that positive emotions and negative emotions play different roles in cognitive processes. Based on the personality systems interaction theory, In the present research, we were interested in the effect of positive emotions on learning. Positive emotions have been studied as facilitating factors of enhancing cognition as well as changing individuals' affective experiences, such as attitude and motivation. Yet other research found that an individual's mood state impeded encoding and retrieving of information. In the following sections, we will first summarize this research on the effect of emotions on cognition. We will then discuss these findings in the context of cognitive theories of multimedia learning in order to derive hypotheses for the impact of positive emotions on learning. Positive Emotions and Cognition From a cognitive perspective, emotional experiences include various cognitive components. Emotions are generated by people's judgment about the world and initiated by an individual's appraisal, which is the output from the interaction of one's concern and a stimulus (Desmet, 2003; Frijda, 1993; There are two competing hypotheses for the effect of positive emotions on cognition. The facilitation hypothesis suggests that positive moods facilitate performance on divergent, creative problem solving tasks Facilitation hypothesis of positive emotions There are several types of relevant positive emotions, such as confident, intriguing, epiphany, enthusiastic, excited, hopeful, curios, enlightened, thrilled, anticipatory, comforting, interesting, Isen and her colleagues identified two mechanisms in support of the facilitation hypothesis. One factor they identified is a long-term memory factor. Positive affect can serve as a retrieval cue for positive material from long-term memory. For example, participants recalled more possible functions for an object from long-term memory when in a positive mood The second factor involves the way information is processed rather than how it is retrieved. Positive mood may affect cognitive processes themselves and not just the resources available for those processes. In other words, positive affect should be viewed as influencing the way in which material is processed, rather than just influencing the amount of processing capacity. Isen and Daubman (1984) and Isen, Johnson, Mertz, and Robinson (1985) suggested that positive affect influences cognitive organization and creativity. These studies showed that positive affect provides cues to the positive material and influences cognitive organization by altering the context in which cognitive activity take place. They suggested that cognitive processes may be more flexible as a function of positive affect, which may also result in greater creativity and improved problem-solving ability Positive emotions have also been studied as direct or indirect factors in changing people's other affective experiences such as attitude, judgment, evaluation and satisfaction Suppression hypothesis The suppression hypothesis describes the opposite effect of positive emotions on cognitive process. The research of this negative effect of emotions started with the study of depressed mood. EMOTIONAL DESIGN March 29, 2010 4 Studies by Ellis, Thomas, and Rodriguez (1984) and Ellis, Seibert and Ellis (1991b) suggested that this negative effect of emotions applies for positive as well as negative emotions, arguing that emotional states in general can impair performance. They suggested that positive mood may increase the demand on working memory because being happy tends to increase the incidence of mood-related thoughts that interrupt processing on a given cognitive task. A study by Even though the facilitation hypothesis is dominant in research related to the effect of positive emotions on cognition, the effect of positive emotion in the learning process is still not well understood, and the implicit assumption by many researchers appears to be that emotions generally create unnecessary cognitive load and should therefore be minimized. We will therefore describe in the next section a theoretical foundation for the impact of emotions on learning that is based on cognitive theories of multimedia learning. We are interested in the question of how the design of the learning materials may be able to induce positive emotions during learning, and how the learners' emotional state may in turn affect learning. Positive Emotions and Multimedia Learning For the purpose of this research, multimedia learning can be defined simply as learning from pictures and words In the context of these models, emotions are typically viewed as a source of extraneous cognitive load that should be reduced as far as possible. Alternative theories suggest, however, that emotions may impact learning in a positive way, for example, by increasing learners' interest and motivation. Below we will summarize related research for these two approaches. Emotions as Extraneous Cognitive Load This approach, which extends the suppression hypothesis described above to multimedia learning, suggests that the introduction of any elements aimed at inducing positive emotions will impose extraneous cognitive load, which might hurt learning. This approach is consistent with the Seductive Detail effect, which suggests that adding unimportant but interesting elements to expository texts impedes the learning of the main points in the text (Garner et al., 1978; Harp & Mayer, 1991). The strategies used in many of these studies to induce positive emotions or interest in learners included the addition of interesting text or visual information to the learning materials. This information has to be processed as additional information, causing extraneous cognitive load. The relative benefit of this additional processing for the increase in learners' interest and motivation was in many cases not high enough to result in enhanced learning. However, other research suggests that interest in the subject and the perceived importance (task value) of the content have to be treated as separate constructs, and that adding information to make materials emotionally interesting may enhance learning Facilitating Effect of Emotions The impact of learners' interest and motivation on learning is described by models such as the ARCS model, which suggests strategies for attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction of the learner We further include in our approach the cognitive-motivational mediation model developed by Pekrun, which describes the activation property of emotions. Positive emotions can be activating (happy, hopeful) or deactivating (satisfied, calm). Likewise, negative emotions can be activating (anxious, angry) or deactivating (hopeless) (Pekrun et al., 2002; Pekrun & Jerusalem, 1996). Therefore, facilitating effects of positive emotions may be expected for those positive emotions that have an activating property. Two Methods of Inducing Positive Emotions A final consideration for this study on the impact of positive emotion on learning is the way in which emotions will be induced in the learner. In research on the effect of positive emotions, the desired emotional states have usually been induced using various treatments such as viewing films or giving a free gift before the task (e.g., As an alternative mood induction approach, we pursued the idea that in multimedia learning environments, the learning material itself can be the major factor that stimulates users' emotions. In EMOTIONAL DESIGN March 29, 2010 7 designing multimedia-based learning, various studies have implied that different aesthetic designs can induce emotions and that these emotions affect users' performance and cognitive process Our approach to induce positive emotion in multimedia learning therefore uses manipulations of the design of the environment that Anthropomorphism: Anthropomorphism is the attribution of uniquely human characteristics and qualities to nonhuman beings, inanimate objects, or natural or supernatural phenomena Baby-face bias: Illustrations and characters in the positive design material were designed as babyface-like characters to induce baby-face bias. According to this effect In the present study we therefore aim to investigate whether positive emotions in multimedia learning environments facilitate or suppress cognitive processes and, as a result, learning. In particular, we are interested in the questions of how the internal induction of positive emotions (induction during learning, through the positive emotional design of learning materials) would affect learning outcomes, cognitive load, and motivation compared to an external induction of positive emotions (induction before a learning task, through a mood induction procedure). We were also interested in learners' perception of their learning achievement and level of satisfaction with their learning experience. Method Participants and Design The participants were 118 students who were enrolled at a large private university in the northeastern U.S. There were 49 male and 79 female participants, and all of them were over 18 years old (M = 24.9, SD = 6.4 yrs.). Each subject was compensated $10 for their participation. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions, which were created by two design factors with two levels each. These factors were the external induction of positive emotions by means of a self- in prior research on emotion and cognition with college students To make sure that changes to the visual design only affected aesthetic aspects, as well as to provide context-relevant seductive augmentation, the positive and the neutral design materials both had the same amount of learning content, user control options, and duration, and applied the same multimedia learning design principles Measures As a manipulation check of mood induction, the Positive Affect Scale Learner's motivation was measured using a self-report instrument consisting of an 8-item questionnaire with 7-point Likert style items developed by