Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions : The Impact of Agent Affect and Gender

This study examined the impact of affect and gender of a pedagogical agent as a learning companion (PAL) on social judgments, interest, self-efficacy, and learning. Two experiments investigated separately the effects of PAL emotional expressions and empathetic responses. Experiment I focused on PAL emotional expressions (positive vs. negative vs. neutral) and gender (male vs. female) with a sample of 142 male and female college students in a computer literacy course. Experiment II investigated the impact of PAL empathetic responses (responsive vs. non-responsive) and gender with 56 pre-service teachers. Results yielded a main effect for emotional expressions on social judgments (p < .05) and main effects for empathetic responses on interest (p < .05) and on self-efficacy (p < .05). For PAL gender, Experiment I yielded main effects on interest (p < .05) and on recall (p < .01); Experiment II yielded a main effect on social judgments (p < .05). Also, Experiment I yielded an interaction trend of PAL emotional expressions and gender on social judgments. Findings imply that the presence of " happy smiles " might not be sufficient to influence learners; rather, that a desirable PAL should be responsive to a learner's affective states and that gender-related social stereotypes in the real world seem to be applied to PAL/learner relationships.

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