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Introduction: The present study examined the influence of emotional states when learning with self-generated drawings. It was assumed that learners in a positive emotional state would profit from learning with self-generated drawings, while learners in a negative emotional state would not profit from this strategy to the same extent but would rather benefit through reading. Methods: University students (N = 123) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions resulting from a 2 × 2 design with self-generated drawings (yes vs. no) and emotional state (positive vs. negative) as independent variables. Results: Results showed that learning with self-generated drawings was more beneficial for a following transfer test than learning without drawings - irrespective of a learner's emotional state. The quality of self-generated drawings predicted the learning outcomes of the retention and pictorial test, but not for transfer. Discussion: Missing effects of emotional states and the missing interaction with self-generated drawings will be discussed.
RESUMEN
When learning with elaborative interrogation, learners are requested by means of prompts to generate parts of the study material. There is evidence, that learning with elaborative interrogation is beneficial. However, it is conceivable that for elaborative interrogation to be beneficial for learning, learners also need resources available to be able to correctly generate parts of the study material. In this connection, one potentially important factor for successfully carrying out such effortful analytic processes, like generating information, is cognitive self-control. However, self-control seems to be a limited resource that can be depleted. Hence, under conditions of depleted self-regulatory resources (ego depletion), elaborative interrogation might lead to an incomplete generation of the requested information, resulting in incomplete study material. Thus, elaborative interrogation may be only beneficial under nondepleted conditions, but disadvantageous under depleted conditions. To investigate this, 97 persons were randomly assigned to one of four conditions resulting from a 2 × 2 between-subjects design with the independent variables ego depletion (yes vs. no) and learning condition (elaborative interrogation vs. control). Ego depletion was manipulated with a writing task: Participants were instructed to transcribe a text on a blank sheet, but only participants in the depletion condition were instructed to omit the letters e and n wherever they would normally appear in their writing. For the elaborative interrogation condition, some segments of the regular text were removed and prompts asking for that particular information were provided. For the control condition, the regular text was provided while no prompts were given. The main dependent variables were the learning outcome measures of a retention test and a transfer test. 2 × 2-ANCOVAs showed no effects of ego depletion, no effects of learning condition and no interaction between ego depletion and learning condition - neither for retention nor for transfer. The concept of ego depletion is recently discussed controversy and these results do contribute to the skeptical view that queries the impact of the concept of ego depletion - at least for cognitive tasks. Moreover, these results question whether elaborative interrogation are also desirable when assessing learning outcomes by means of retention and transfer tests.
RESUMEN
We investigated emotional design features that may influence multimedia learning with a self-generated learning (SGL) activity, namely answering elaborative interrogations. We assumed that a positive emotional design would be associated with a higher motivation to accomplish the additional SGL activity. Moreover, an interaction was expected: Learners learning with a positive emotional design should profit from learning with elaborative interrogations whereas learners learning with a negative emotional design would not profit from this strategy to the same extent but would rather benefit through reading. Since no negative emotional design existed yet, we additionally took the challenge to construct one. In a preliminary study, the emotional design features were pre-tested for their influence on emotional state and according to evaluation results, emotional design features were modified for the final versions. For the main study, German students (N = 228) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions that resulted from a 3 × 2 Design with emotional design (intended-positive vs. intended-neutral vs. intended-negative) and SGL activity (elaborative interrogations vs. no elaborative interrogations). Contrary to expectations, the intended-negative design worked not out as intended, but was rather comparable with the positive emotional design with respect to learners' emotional states. Learner motivation was higher when learning with the intended-negative emotional than the neutral design. The quality of the elaborated answers and learner motivation correlated positively with the performance of all learning outcome scores. For transfer questions which addressed the elaborated concepts, an interaction can be reported: learners learning with the positive emotional design benefitted from learning by reading compared to answering the elaborative interrogations. Regarding transfer questions whose concepts were explicitly described in the instructional material, it was better to learn with the intended-negative emotional than the neutral design. According to results of mediation analyses, the influence of motivation on learning outcomes could mostly be explained by the influence of motivation on answering the elaborative interrogations. Implications for creating emotional design as well as its effect on learning are discussed.
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One of the frequently examined design principles in multimedia learning is the personalization principle. Based on empirical evidence this principle states that using personalized messages in multimedia learning is more beneficial than using formal language (e.g., using 'you' instead of 'the'). Although there is evidence that these slight changes in regard to the language style affect learning, motivation and the perceived cognitive load, it remains unclear, (1) whether the positive effects of personalized language can be transferred to all kinds of content of learning materials (e.g., specific potentially aversive health issues) and (2) which are the underlying processes (e.g., attention allocation) of the personalization effect. German university students (N = 37) learned symptoms and causes of cerebral hemorrhages either with a formal or a personalized version of the learning material. Analysis revealed comparable results to the few existing previous studies, indicating an inverted personalization effect for potentially aversive learning material. This effect was specifically revealed in regard to decreased average fixation duration and the number of fixations exclusively on the images in the personalized compared to the formal version. These results can be seen as indicators for an inverted effect of personalization on the level of visual attention.
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Standardized norm data for three scales of a 19-item self-report measure on environmental spatial strategies are provided. This self-report measure comprises egocentric spatial strategies, an allocentric mental map strategy and knowledge of cardinal directions as three separate scales, "Validation of a 3-factor structure of spatial strategies and relations to possession and usage of navigational aids" (Münzer et al., 2016) [3]. The data are based on a large sample (N>4000) representative for the population in Germany. Standardized norm data for men and women in different age groups are provided through percentile ranks and T-values.