Effects of Pedagogical Agent's Personality and Emotional Feedback Strategy on Chinese Students' Learning Experiences and Performance: A Study Based on Virtual Tai Chi Training Studio

In virtual learning environment, both personality and emotional features of animated pedagogical agents (APAs) may influence learning. To investigate this question, we developed four APAs with two distinct personality types and two sets of gestures expressing distinct emotional feedback. Effects of APAs' personality types and emotional feedback strategies on learning experiences and performance were assessed experimentally using a virtual Tai Chi training system. Fifty six participants completed the experiment. Results showed that positive emotional feedback strategy led to better learning experiences and performance than negative feedback strategy. Moreover, personality type had significant effect on learning. Choleric APAs led to better performance than Phlegmatic APAs. Personality types moderated the effect of emotional feedback on learning satisfaction. Our study demonstrates that APAs with distinct personality types and emotional feedback are important design parameters for virtual learning environments.

[1]  C.D. Martin,et al.  The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places [Book Review] , 1997, IEEE Spectrum.

[2]  Qianli Xu,et al.  Personality of social robots perceived through the appearance. , 2012, Work.

[3]  K. M. Lee,et al.  Can robots manifest personality? : An empirical test of personality recognition, social responses, and social presence in human-robot interaction , 2006 .

[4]  K. Grammer,et al.  Facial symmetry and the big-five personality factors , 2005 .

[5]  Bruno D. Zumbo,et al.  An empirical investigation of Eysenck's typology , 1989 .

[6]  Winslow Burleson,et al.  Gender-Specific Approaches to Developing Emotionally Intelligent Learning Companions , 2007, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[7]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Consensus at zero acquaintance: replication, behavioral cues, and stability. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[8]  Etienne de Sevin,et al.  Evaluation of Four Designed Virtual Agent Personalities , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.

[9]  S. Read,et al.  Virtual Personalities: A Neural Network Model of Personality , 2007 .

[10]  Clifford Nass,et al.  The media equation - how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places , 1996 .

[11]  J. Forgas.  Feeling and thinking : the role of affect in social cognition , 2000 .

[12]  Peta Wyeth,et al.  GameFlow: a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games , 2005, CIE.

[13]  Scotty D. Craig,et al.  AutoTutor Detects and Responds to Learners Affective and Cognitive States , 2008 .

[14]  Antonio Camurri,et al.  Toward a Minimal Representation of Affective Gestures , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.

[15]  HIGH EYE-Q , 2008, Science.

[16]  Aristide Saggino,et al.  The Big Three or the Big Five? A replication study , 2000 .

[17]  Clifford Nass,et al.  Consistency of personality in interactive characters: verbal cues, non-verbal cues, and user characteristics , 2000, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[18]  Diana Arellano,et al.  Generation and visualization of emotional states in virtual characters , 2008 .

[19]  J. Webster,et al.  Flow in Computer-Mediated Communication , 1992 .

[20]  Justin Kruger,et al.  When what you type isn’t what they read: The perseverance of stereotypes and expectancies over e-mail , 2005 .

[21]  Ning Wang,et al.  The politeness effect: Pedagogical agents and learning outcomes , 2008, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[22]  C. Nass,et al.  Does computer-synthesized speech manifest personality? Experimental tests of recognition, similarity-attraction, and consistency-attraction. , 2001, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[23]  Sampo V. Paunonen,et al.  Facial features as personality cues , 1999 .

[24]  Shi Bing.  A Study on the Appraisal Criteria of University Students' 24-stroke Taiji , 2003 .

[25]  Robert K. Atkinson,et al.  Animated agents and learning: Does the type of verbal feedback they provide matter? , 2013, Comput. Educ..

[26]  N. Badler,et al.  Toward Representing Agent Behaviors Modified by Personality and Emotion , 2002 .

[27]  Yanghee Kim,et al.  Simulating Instructional Roles through Pedagogical Agents , 2005, Int. J. Artif. Intell. Educ..

[28]  S. Gosling,et al.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Personality Judgments Based on Physical Appearance Personality Judgments Based on Physical Appearance , 2022 .

[29]  Beijing,et al.  DEVELOPMENT OF THE REVISED EYSENCK PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRE SHORT SCALE FOR CHINESE (EPQ-RSC) , 2000 .

[30]  A. L. Baylor,et al.  A Social-Cognitive Framework for Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions , 2006 .

[31]  Russell Beale,et al.  Affective interaction: How emotional agents affect users , 2009, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[32]  B. Gelder.  Towards the neurobiology of emotional body language , 2006, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[33]  R. Mayer,et al.  Fostering social agency in multimedia learning: Examining the impact of an animated agent’s voice ☆ , 2005 .

[34]  D. Leutner,et al.  Teaching Learning Strategies with a Pedagogical Agent , 2010, J. Media Psychol. Theor. Methods Appl..

[35]  Nicole Fruehauf.  Flow The Psychology Of Optimal Experience , 2016 .

[36]  Michael J. Beatty,et al.  Is there empirical evidence for a nonverbal profile of extraversion?: a meta‐analysis and critique of the literature , 2004 .

[37]  J. Stamps,et al.  Personality and individual differences in plasticity , 2016, Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.

[38]  Anastasios A. Economides,et al.  The effect of emotional feedback on behavioral intention to use computer based assessment , 2012, Comput. Educ..

[39]  Thomas W. G. Dekker.  Personality in Embodied Conversational Agents: Effects on User Experience , 2012 .

[40]  Jason Tipples,et al.  Wide eyes and an open mouth enhance facial threat , 2007 .

[41]  P. Borkenau,et al.  Thin slices of behavior as cues of personality and intelligence. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[42]  James C. Lester,et al.  Developing Empirically Based Student Personality Profiles for Affective Feedback Models , 2010, Intelligent Tutoring Systems.

[43]  P. Borkenau,et al.  Trait inferences: Sources of validity at zero acquaintance. , 1992 .

[44]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Consensus in personality judgments at zero acquaintance. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[45]  Stefan Engeser,et al.  Advances in Flow Research , 2012 .

[46]  N. Freedman.  Hands, Words, and Mind: On the Structuralization of Body Movements During Discourse and the Capacity for Verbal Representation , 1977 .

[47]  M. D. Meijer.  The contribution of general features of body movement to the attribution of emotions , 1989 .

[48]  Robert K. Atkinson,et al.  Fostering multimedia learning of science: Exploring the role of an animated agent's image , 2007, Comput. Educ..

[49]  Kostas Karpouzis,et al.  Emotion Analysis in Man-Machine Interaction Systems , 2004, MLMI.

[50]  Yanghee Kim,et al.  The impact of learner attributes and learner choice in an agent-based environment , 2011, Comput. Educ..

[51]  ChanMin Kim,et al.  The role of affective and motivational factors in designing personalized learning environments , 2012, Educational Technology Research and Development.

[52]  Aron Larsson,et al.  Recognition of emotions by the emotional feedback through behavioral human poses , 2015 .

[53]  D. Farabee,et al.  Psychosocial Profiles of Criminal Justice- and Noncriminal Justice-Referred Substance Abusers in Treatment , 1993 .

[54]  C. Nass,et al.  Does computer-synthesized speech manifest personality? Experimental tests of recognition, similarity-attraction, and consistency-attraction. , 2001 .

[55]  P. Devine.  Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. , 1989 .

[56]  Yanghee Kim,et al.  Pedagogical agents as learning companions: the impact of agent emotion and gender , 2007, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..