Articles:Emotional Design in Multimedia Learning

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Contents

Research Question

Can positive emotions facilitate cognitive processing and improve cognitive and affective outcomes in multimedia learning?

Emotions

complex set of interactions among subjective and objective factors, mediated by neural/hormonal systems which can (Kleinginna & Kleinginna, 1981)

  1. give rise to affective experiences such as feelings of arousal, pleasure/displeasure
  2. generate cognitive processes such as emotionally relevant perceptual effects, appraisals, labeling processes
  3. activate widespread physiological adjustments to the arousing conditions
  4. lead to behavior that is often, but not always, expressive, goal directed, and adaptive

Unlike moods, which could last for an extended period of time, emotions can change behavior over a relatively short term and last for short periods. People who are in a positive emotional state interpret situations more positively than they would at other times, this allows them to make more positive judgments and give favorable feedback.

facilitation hypothesis

suggests that positive moods facilitate performance on divergent, creative problem solving tasks (Isen & Baron, 1991; Erez & Isen, 2002; Konradt et al., 2003).

suppression hypothesis

suggests that moods can take extra-task processing or task-irrelevant processing and will have a negative effect on reasoning (Oaksford, Morris, Grainger, & Williams, 1996).

cognitive perspective

  • generated by the individual’s judgment about the world
  • initiated by an individual’s appraisal of his or her circumstances
  • experience of emotions includes various cognitive components
    1. activating appraisal
    2. subsequent desires
    3. intentions

results

According to this study positive emotion can assist cognitive process. It also suggest that instructional designers should consider it an important factor because

  • this study provides empirical support for the need to consider emotional design effects in multimedia learning environments
  • able to show that positive emotions do not only affect cognition, they also increase learning outcomes
  • emotional design could provide a more effective & longer lasting positive emotional state than mood
  • positive emotions increase learners’ germane cognitive load,
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