Leveraging avatars in 3D virtual environments (Second Life) for interactive learning: the moderating role of the behavioral activation system vs. behavioral inhibition system and the mediating role of enjoyment

Within the Entertainment-Education (E-E) framework, two experiments examined the effects of avatar-based e-health education targeting college students. Study 1 (between-subjects factorial design experiment: N = 94) tested the effects of message framing in e-learning and the moderating role of students' motivational systems on their enjoyment of the e-learning experience. The results indicated a significant interaction between message framing and students' motivational systems on their enjoyment of the e-learning experience, as well as the significant impact of avatar-based e-health education on the students' knowledge acquisition and condom use/safe sex self-efficacy improvements. Study 2 (within-subjects design: N = 88) examined the influence of students' parasocial interaction (PSI) with a pedagogical avatar on the cognitive (evaluation of educational value), affective (enjoyment), and behavioral (willingness to take part in Human Papillomavirus awareness campaigns) dimensions of the E-E process. The results of a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis also indicated the mediating role of students' enjoyment in their PSI with the instructional avatar, thus confirming the basic premise of the E-E paradigm in interactive learning environments.

[1]  G. Riva,et al.  A Second Life for eHealth: Prospects for the Use of 3-D Virtual Worlds in Clinical Psychology , 2008, Journal of medical Internet research.

[2]  M. A. Gerend,et al.  Using message framing to promote acceptance of the human papillomavirus vaccine. , 2007, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[3]  Traci Mann,et al.  Approach/avoidance motivation, message framing, and health behavior: understanding the congruency effect , 2006, Motivation and emotion.

[4]  Albert Bandura,et al.  Exercise of personal and collective efficacy in changing societies , 1995 .

[5]  Ute Ritterfeld,et al.  Addressing Media Stigma for People Experiencing Mental Illness Using an Entertainment-Education Strategy , 2006, Journal of health psychology.

[6]  Peter Salovey,et al.  The Influence of Message Framing on Intentions to Perform Health Behaviors , 1993 .

[7]  G. Bente,et al.  Avatar-Mediated Networking: Increasing Social Presence and Interpersonal Trust in Net-Based Collaborations , 2008 .

[8]  Traci Mann,et al.  Dispositional motivations and message framing: a test of the congruency hypothesis in college students. , 2004, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[9]  Jeremy N. Bailenson,et al.  The Effect of Behavioral Realism and Form Realism of Real-Time Avatar Faces on Verbal Disclosure, Nonverbal Disclosure, Emotion Recognition, and Copresence in Dyadic Interaction , 2006, PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

[10]  Steve Wheeler,et al.  Second Life: an overview of the potential of 3-D virtual worlds in medical and health education. , 2007, Health information and libraries journal.

[11]  D. Horton,et al.  Mass communication and para-social interaction; observations on intimacy at a distance. , 1956, Psychiatry.

[12]  S. Kalichman,et al.  Context framing to enhance HIV-antibody-testing messages targeted to African American women. , 1995, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[13]  S. Chaiken,et al.  The effect of message framing on breast self-examination attitudes, intentions, and behavior. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[14]  E. Rogers,et al.  Entertainment-Education and Social Change: An Analysis of Parasocial Interaction, Social Learning, Collective Efficacy, and Paradoxical Communication. , 2000 .

[15]  Chris Dede,et al.  Immersive Interfaces for Engagement and Learning , 2009, Science.

[16]  Rinat B. Rosenberg-Kima,et al.  Interface agents as social models for female students: The effects of agent visual presence and appearance on female students' attitudes and beliefs , 2008, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[17]  A. Rubin,et al.  Audience Activity and Soap Opera Involvement: A Uses and Effects Investigation. , 1987 .

[18]  Alexander J. Rothman,et al.  The Effect of Approach and Avoidance Referents on Academic Outcomes: A Test of Competing Predictions , 2006 .

[19]  R. Atkinson.  Optimizing learning from examples using animated pedagogical agents. , 2002 .

[20]  Claudia Lampert,et al.  Arvind Singhal / Michael J. Cody / Everett M. Rogers / Miguel Sabido (Hrsg.) (2004): Entertainment-Education and Social Change. History, Research, and Practice. Mahwah, NJ, London / Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004 , 2005 .

[21]  Jonathan Cohen.  Defining Identification: A Theoretical Look at the Identification of Audiences With Media Characters , 2001 .

[22]  D. Schunk,et al.  Self-Efficacy and Academic Motivation , 2002 .

[23]  Seung-A Annie Jin,et al.  Avatar-Based Advertising in Second Life , 2009 .

[24]  Angela Y. Lee,et al.  Bringing the frame into focus: the influence of regulatory fit on processing fluency and persuasion. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[25]  Seung-A Annie Jin,et al.  The Roles of Modality Richness and Involvement in Shopping Behavior in 3D Virtual Stores , 2009 .

[26]  A. Elliot.  The Hierarchical Model of Approach-Avoidance Motivation , 2006 .

[27]  Soyoung Kim,et al.  Designing nonverbal communication for pedagogical agents: When less is more , 2009, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[28]  C. Carver,et al.  Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: The BIS/BAS Scales , 1994 .

[29]  Thomas W. Valente,et al.  Mass Media and Interpersonal Influence in a Reproductive Health Communication Campaign in Bolivia , 1998 .

[30]  Dean E. Hewes,et al.  The Parasocial Contact Hypothesis , 2005 .

[31]  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 .

[32]  Patricia Bijttebier,et al.  Psychometric evaluation of the behavioral inhibition/behavioral activation system scales and the sensitivity to punishment and sensitivity to reward questionnaire in a sample of eating disordered patients , 2009 .

[33]  Marjolein Moorman,et al.  The influence of message framing, intention to quit smoking, and nicotine dependence on the persuasiveness of smoking cessation messages. , 2008, Addictive behaviors.

[34]  E M Rogers,et al.  Entertainment-education and HIV/AIDS prevention: a field experiment in Tanzania. , 2000, Journal of health communication.

[35]  Emily Moyer-Gusé.  Toward a Theory of Entertainment Persuasion: Explaining the Persuasive Effects of Entertainment‐Education Messages , 2008 .

[36]  Peter Vorderer,et al.  Think science!: entertainment education in interactive theaters , 2004, CIE.

[37]  P. Vorderer,et al.  Enjoyment: At the Heart of Media Entertainment , 2004 .

[38]  R. Rubin,et al.  Attribution in Social and Parasocial Relationships , 1989 .

[39]  Kent C. Berridge,et al.  Pleasures of the brain , 2003, Brain and Cognition.

[40]  Sean C. Duncan,et al.  Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds , 2008 .

[41]  S. Chaiken,et al.  Message Framing, Self-Discrepancies, and Yielding to Persuasive Messages: The Motivational Significance of Psychological Situations , 1994 .

[42]  Everett M. Rogers,et al.  Dimensions of Parasocial Interaction by Letter-Writers to a Popular Entertainment-Education Soap Opera in India , 2000 .

[43]  Richard M. Ryan.  A Special Issue on Approach and Avoidance Motivation , 2006 .

[44]  W J Brown,et al.  Effects of a prosocial television soap opera in promoting women's status. , 1991, Human communication research.

[45]  E. Higgins,et al.  Beyond pleasure and pain. , 1997, The American psychologist.

[46]  Charles S. Carver,et al.  Action, Emotion, and Personality: Emerging Conceptual Integration , 2000 .

[47]  J. Gray,et al.  Brain systems that mediate both emotion and cognition. , 1990 .

[48]  K. Douglas,et al.  Psychometric Properties of Carver and White's (1994) BIS/BAS Scales in a Large Sample of Offenders. , 2008, Personality and individual differences.

[49]  Amy L. Baylor,et al.  Pedagogical agents as social models for engineering: The influence of agent appearance on female choice , 2005, AIED.

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

[51]  Everett M. Rogers,et al.  A Theoretical Agenda for Entertainment—Education , 2002 .

[52]  Arvind Singhal,et al.  Air Cover and Ground Mobilization: Integrating Entertainment-Education Broadcasts With Community Listening and Service Delivery in India , 2003 .

[53]  Namkee Park,et al.  Parasocial Interaction with My Avatar: Effects of Interdependent Self-Construal and the Mediating Role of Self-Presence in an Avatar-Based Console Game, Wii , 2009, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[54]  James C. Lester,et al.  The Case for Social Agency in Computer-Based Teaching: Do Students Learn More Deeply When They Interact With Animated Pedagogical Agents? , 2001 .

[55]  David G. Allen,et al.  Black and white and read all over: Race differences in reactions to recruitment Web sites , 2008 .

[56]  W. Bainbridge.  The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds , 2007, Science.

[57]  J. Gray,et al.  Perspectives on Anxiety and Impulsivity: A Commentary , 1987 .

[58]  C. Carver.  Approach, Avoidance, and the Self-Regulation of Affect and Action , 2006 .

[59]  Sarah Lord,et al.  MyStudentBody–Stress: An Online Stress Management Intervention for College Students , 2008, Journal of health communication.

[60]  Albert Bandura,et al.  Social Cognitive Theory for Personal and Social Change by Enabling Media , 2003 .

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

[62]  A. Elliot,et al.  Approach and Avoidance Motivation , 2001 .

[63]  A. Bandura.  Self-efficacy. I: V. S. Ramachandran (red.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (vol. s. ). New York: Academic Press. , 1994 .

[64]  Yanghee Kim,et al.  Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions: The Role of Agent Competency and Type of Interaction , 2006 .