Filip Děchtěrenko

Enjoyment or involvement? Affective-motivational mediation during learning from a complex computerized simulation

Abstract There is increased interest in augmenting multimedia instructional materials to elevate learners’ positive affective-motivational states in order to improve learning. However, these efforts have only been partly successful and mediational effects of positive affective-motivational states have not always been established. In this study, university students (N = 65) from the Czech Republic, a country where beer brewing is a source of national pride, were informed that they would either study how to brew beer (high intrinsic motivation condition) or how to prepare a citrate substrate (low intrinsic motivation condition). The 90-min simulation environment used for learning was about beer brewing in both cases, with superficial changes to instructions and graphics to disguise the topic manipulation. Generalized positive affect, overall enjoyment, flow, and learning involvement were higher in the beer brewing condition (Cohen’s d = 0.44–0.87) as were learning gains when measured immediately (retention: d = 0.48; transfer: d = 0.46) and a month later (retention: d = 0.66; transfer: d = 0.62). However, only learning involvement and flow positively mediated the influence of the topic manipulation on immediate learning outcomes; there were no mediation effects on delayed learning outcomes after co-varying out immediate learning. The findings corroborate results from extant studies on the importance of topic interest in learning from instructional texts. They also indicate that affective-motivational mediation is one, but not the only, mechanism by which topic-based intrinsic motivation manipulations influence learning and that induced positive affective-motivational states can be differentially related or unrelated to learning.

Visual properties and memorising scenes: Effects of image-space sparseness and uniformity

Previous studies have demonstrated that humans have a remarkable capacity to memorise a large number of scenes. The research on memorability has shown that memory performance can be predicted by the content of an image. We explored how remembering an image is affected by the image properties within the context of the reference set, including the extent to which it is different from its neighbours (image-space sparseness) and if it belongs to the same category as its neighbours (uniformity). We used a reference set of 2,048 scenes (64 categories), evaluated pairwise scene similarity using deep features from a pretrained convolutional neural network (CNN), and calculated the image-space sparseness and uniformity for each image. We ran three memory experiments, varying the memory workload with experiment length and colour/greyscale presentation. We measured the sensitivity and criterion value changes as a function of image-space sparseness and uniformity. Across all three experiments, we found separate effects of 1) sparseness on memory sensitivity, and 2) uniformity on the recognition criterion. People better remembered (and correctly rejected) images that were more separated from others. People tended to make more false alarms and fewer miss errors in images from categorically uniform portions of the image-space. We propose that both image-space properties affect human decisions when recognising images. Additionally, we found that colour presentation did not yield better memory performance over grayscale images.

Does Motivation Enhance Knowledge Acquisition in Digital Game-Based and Multimedia Learning? A Review of Studies from One Lab

In the contexts of digital game-based and multimedia learning, little is known about the strengths of associations between positive affective-motivational factors elicited during a study session and the quality of knowledge acquisition. Here, we take a step forward in filling this gap by re-analyzing our 11 experiments carried out between 2009–2017, featuring digital games, a simulation, animations, or a computerized presentation (total N = 1,288; primarily Czech and Slovak high school and university learners). The correlational meta-analysis showed that the overall relationship between positive affective-motivational variables and learning outcomes was significant, but relatively weak. The weaker relationship was found for enjoyment and generalized positive affect compared to flow. The finding corroborates the idea that affective-motivational states may be differentially related to learning outcomes. Future research should investigate why some affective-motivational states seem to play relatively limited roles in learning from multimedia instructional materials.

Gamifying a Simulation: Do a Game Goal, Choice, Points, and Praise Enhance Learning?:

Despite the increased interest in gamification approaches, there is a lack of comparative studies that shed light on the applicability of these approaches in educational contexts. In this explorative study, with an experimental design, university learners (N = 98) studied a complex process (i.e., how to brew beer) in a 2-hour-long computerized simulation. In the experimental condition, the simulation featured the following game design elements: game goals, increased freedom of choice, points, virtual currency, and praise (i.e., a gamified simulation). These elements were absent in the simulation versions used in the two control conditions. No differences in learning outcomes and intrinsic motivation variables between the gamified simulation and its nongamified versions were observed. The gamified simulation was perceived to be significantly easier than the nongamified versions (ηp 2 = 0.10; d = 0.74, 0.42). Of the game elements used in this study, the participants perceived most positively a clear, game-like goal. The findings are consistent with self-determination theory, cognitive-affective theory of learning from media, and cognitive load theory. The findings also support the emerging notion that caution should be applied when using gamification approaches in educational contexts.

Effect of scene memorability on change detection performance

We studied relationship between memorability of photographs and difficulty to notice changes within them. Poster presented at European Conference on Visual Perception (Aug 27-31, 2017)