A Motivational Determinant of Facial Emotion Recognition : Regulatory Focus Affects Recognition of Emotions in Faces

Funding: The research was supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, project 452-07-006). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Gender Stereotypes in a Children's Television Program: Effects on Girls' and Boys' Stereotype Endorsement, Math Performance, Motivational Dispositions, and Attitudes

Television programs are a central part of children's everyday lives. These programs often transmit stereotypes about gender roles such as “math is for boys and not for girls.” So far, however, it is unclear whether stereotypes that are embedded in television programs affect girls' and boys' performance, motivational dispositions, or attitudes. On the basis of research on expectancy-value theory and stereotype threat, we conducted a randomized study with a total of 335 fifth-grade students to address this question. As the experimental material, we used a television program that had originally been produced for a national TV channel. The program was designed to show children that math could be interesting and fun. In the experimental condition, the program included a gender stereotyped segment in which two girls who were frustrated with math copied their math homework from a male classmate. In the control condition, participants watched an equally long, neutral summary of the first part of the video. We investigated effects on boys' and girls' stereotype endorsement, math performance, and different motivational constructs to gain insights into differential effects. On the basis of prior research, we expected negative effects of watching the stereotypes on girls' performance, motivational dispositions, and attitudes. Effects on the same outcomes for boys as well as children's stereotype endorsement were explored as open questions. We pre-registered our research predictions and analyses before conducting the experiment. Our results provide partial support for short-term effects of gender stereotypes embedded in television programs: Watching the stereotypes embedded in the video increased boys' and girls' stereotype endorsement. Boys reported a higher sense of belonging but lower utility value after watching the video with the stereotypes. Boys' other outcome variables were not affected, and there were also no effects on girl's performance, motivational dispositions, or attitudes. Results offer initial insights into how even short segments involving gender stereotypes in television shows can influence girls' and boys' stereotype endorsement and how such stereotypes may constitute one factor that contributes to gender differences in the STEM fields

Learning by Drawing Visual Representations: Potential, Purposes, and Practical Implications

The technique of drawing to learn has received increasing attention in recent years. In this article, we will present distinct purposes for using drawing that are based on active, constructive, and interactive forms of engagement. In doing so, we hope to show that drawing to learn should be widely used and that there is good evidence to support its use in many situations. To make the most of these distinct purposes, teachers should note that what learners draw matters and that this needs to be assessed in relation to task demands. Drawing to learn will also require learners to be supported to engage meaningfully in ways that are matched to these pedagogical purposes

In the eyes of the beholder: How experts and novices interpret dynamic stimuli

Jarodzka, H., Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., & Van Gog, T. (2010). In the eyes of the beholder: How experts and novices interpret dynamic stimuli. Learning and Instruction, 20, 146-154. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2009.02.019Tasks with a complex, dynamic visual component require not only the acquisition of conceptual/procedural but also of perceptual/attentional skills. This study examined expertise differences in perceiving and interpreting complex, dynamic visual stimuli on a performance and on a process level, including perceptual and conceptual strategies. Performance, eye movement, and verbal report data were obtained from seven experts and 14 novices. Results show that experts compared to novices attend more to relevant aspects of the stimulus, use more heterogeneous task approaches, and use knowledge-based shortcuts. Implications for instructional design for the acquisition of perceptual skills are discussed

Attention guidance during example study via the model’s eye movements.

Van Gog, T., Jarodzka, H., Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., & Paas, F. (2009). Attention guidance during example study via the model’s eye movements. Computers in Human Behavior, 25, 785-791.Research has shown that guiding students’ attention guides their thought, and that attention can be communicated via eye movements. Therefore, this study investigates whether such a procedure can further enhance the effectiveness of examples in which a solution procedure is demonstrated to students by a (expert) model. Students’ attention was guided by showing them not only the model’s problem-solving actions on the computer screen, but also the model’s eye movements while doing so. Interestingly, results show that combined with a verbal description of the thought process, this form of attention guidance had detrimental effects on learning. Consequences for further research on attention guidance and instructional design are discussed

“Now move like that fish”: Can enactment help learners come to understand dynamic motion presented in photographs and videos?

Technological advancements offer new possibilities of interacting with learning materials, including the use of gestures and body movements. The present study addressed the question of how using one’s body to enact movements whilst learning about them would affect outcomes. 85 participants were shown either sequences of photographs or videos of fishes deploying different locomotion patterns for propulsion. Half of the participants in each visualization condition were prompted to enact the movements whilst learning. During learning, all participants were asked to rate their mental effort; moreover, their enactments were videotaped and later coded with respect to their frequency of occurrence and their congruency with the actual fish locomotion. After the learning phase, students were asked to classify fish based on their locomotion behavior as well as to describe fish showing familiar and unfamiliar locomotion behaviors to assess learning outcomes. Results showed that – independent of visualization format – being asked to enact the fish movements had a positive effect on the students’ ability to classify fish as long as the locomotion behavior was neither too easy nor too difficult to be recognized. It did not affect the ability to describe fish movements. The frequency of enactments and their congruency were unrelated to learning outcomes. Taken together, the effects of enactments in this study appear to be limited to certain tasks. Furthermore, they are likely to be due to enhancing engagement in the learning rather than to mechanisms specific to enacting body movements

Conveying clinical reasoning based on visual observation via eye-movement modelling examples

Jarodzka, H., Balslev, T., Holmqvist, K., Nyström, M., Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., & Eika, B. (2012). Conveying clinical reasoning based on visual observation via eye-movement modelling examples. Instructional Science, 40(5), 813-827. doi:10.1007/s11251-012-9218-5Complex perceptual tasks, like clinical reasoning based on visual observations of patients, require not only conceptual knowledge about diagnostic classes but also the skills to visually search for symptoms and interpret these observations. However, medical education so far has focused very little on how visual observation skills can be efficiently conveyed to novices. The current study applied a novel instructional method to teach these skills by showing the learners how an expert model visually searches and interprets symptoms (i.e., eye-movement modelling examples; EMMEs). Case videos of patients were verbally explained by a model (control condition) and presented to students. In the experimental conditions, the participants received a recording of the model’s eye movements superimposed on the case videos. The eye movements were displayed by either highlighting the features the model focused on with a circle (the circle condition) or by blurring the features the model did not focus on (the spotlight condition). Compared to the other two conditions, results show that a spotlight on the case videos better guides the students’ attention towards the relevant features. Moreover, when testing the students’ clinical reasoning skills with videos of new patient cases without any guidance participants studying EMMEs with a spotlight showed improved their visual search and enhanced interpretation performance of the symptoms in contrast to participants in either the circle or the control condition. These findings show that a spotlight EMME can successfully convey clinical reasoning based on visual observations

Gelingensbedingungen beim Einsatz digitaler Medien im Unterricht – Kognitive und motivationale Voraussetzungen von Lehrpersonen

Gelingensbedingungen beim Einsatz digitaler Medien im Unterricht – Kognitive und motivationale Voraussetzungen von Lehrpersone

Learning perceptual aspects of diagnosis in medicine via eye movement modeling examples on patient video cases

Jarodzka, H., Balslev, T., Holmqvist, K., Nyström, M., Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., & Eika, B. (2010). Learning perceptual aspects of diagnosis in medicine via eye movement modeling examples on patient video cases. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1703-1708). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Complex tasks with a visually rich component, like diagnosing seizures based on patient video cases, not only require the acquisition of conceptual but also of perceptual skills. Medical education has found that besides biomedical knowledge (knowledge of scientific facts) clinical knowledge (actual experience with patients) is crucial. One important aspect of clinical knowledge that medical education has hardly focused on, yet, are perceptual skills, like visually searching, detecting, and interpreting relevant features. Research on instructional design has shown that in a visually rich, but simple classification task perceptual skills could be conveyed by means of showing the eye movements of a didactically behaving expert. The current study applied this method to medical education in a complex task. This was done by example video cases, which were verbally explained by an expert. In addition the experimental groups saw a display of the expert’s eye movements recorded, while he performed the task. Results show that blurring non-attended areas of the expert enhances diagnostic performance of epileptic seizures by medical students in contrast to displaying attended areas as a circle and to a control group without attention guidance. These findings show that attention guidance fosters learning of perceptual aspects of clinical knowledge, if implemented in a spotlight manner