Students, tasks and emotions: Identifying the contribution of emotions to students' reading of popular culture and popular science texts

Abstract In this investigation young adolescent students (N = 181) engaged in an interactive computer reading task. The aim was to explore sequences of students' affective responses to expository texts by identifying their character, intensity and their relationship with further text processing. Affective responses were measured using probes consisting of face icons and were recorded immediately prior to students' choices about whether to continue reading. Emotions reported and their intensity influenced further reading of the texts. Findings support a model linking topic interest, affect and persistence [Ainley, M., Hidi, S., & Berndorff, D. (2002). Interest, learning, and the psychological processes that mediate their relationship. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(3), 545–561] and demonstrate the role of interest in the motivation of text processing.

[1]  David J. Shernoff,et al.  Student engagement in high school classrooms from the perspective of flow theory. , 2003 .

[2]  David A. Bergin,et al.  Influences on classroom interest , 1999 .

[3]  Reinhard Pekrun,et al.  A Social-Cognitive, Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions , 2000 .

[4]  A. Krapp.  An educational-psychological theory of interest and its relation to SDT. , 2002 .

[5]  S. Hidi,et al.  The Role Of Interest In Learning And Development , 1994 .

[6]  Jessi L. Smith,et al.  The "how" of goal pursuit: Interest and self-regulation. , 2000 .

[7]  C. Sansone,et al.  Once a boring task always a boring task? Interest as a self-regulatory mechanism. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[8]  S. Hidi,et al.  Interest, Learning, and the Psychological Processes That Mediate Their Relationship. , 2002 .

[9]  M. Mitchell.  Situational interest: Its multifaceted structure in the secondary school mathematics classroom. , 1993 .

[10]  E Diener.  Introduction to the special section on the structure of emotion. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[11]  S. Hidi,et al.  Gender and interest processes in response to literary texts: situational and individual interest , 2002 .

[12]  J. Vaidya,et al.  The two general activation systems of affect: Structural findings, evolutionary considerations, and psychobiological evidence , 1999 .

[13]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  The affect system has parallel and integrative processing components: Form follows function. , 1999 .

[14]  Barbara Schneider,et al.  Becoming Adult How Teenagers Prepare For The World Of Work , 2000 .

[15]  Reinhard Pekrun,et al.  Positive emotions in education. , 2002 .

[16]  Clive Seligman,et al.  Affect and the overjustification effect. , 1984 .

[17]  E. Frydenberg.  Beyond coping: Meeting goals, visions, and challenges. , 2002 .

[18]  C. Sansone,et al.  Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation : the search for optimal motivation and performance , 2000 .

[19]  E. Deci,et al.  Handbook of Self-Determination Research , 2002 .

[20]  J. Harackiewicz,et al.  Motivating the Academically Unmotivated: A Critical Issue for the 21st Century , 2000 .