Cognitive efficiency of animated pedagogical agents for learning English as a second language.

摘要

The present study explored the use of an animated pedagogical agent (Agent Group) with an electronic arrow and voice narration (Arrow Group) in a multimedia based learning environment where 74 college level English as a Second Language (ESL) students learned English relative clauses with a specific instructional method called 'explicit rule presentation'.; No significant difference in learning gain from pretest to posttest was found between Agent and Arrow Group. This result corroborates Clark's (2001) claim that what causes learning is an instructional method (in this study, pointing to and voicing key concepts during instruction), not a delivery medium (in this study an animated pedagogical agent or electronic arrow with voice). It was also found that the animated pedagogical agent's visual appearances and social behaviors did not motivate, interest, or tutor learners better than a simple electronic arrow with voice. Thus, this result does not support the Persona Effect (Lester, Converse, Kahler, Barlow, Stone, & Bhogal, 1997), which is derived from the hypothesis that an animated pedagogical agent makes human-computer interaction more social and interesting, and then leads learners to work harder. In the present study learners in Agent and Arrow Group did not differ in the amount of self-reported mental effort that they invested in processing the instruction.; The study also did not support the cognitive efficiency hypothesis (Cobb, 1997). Cognitive efficiency refers to one medium requiring less conscious effort from learners in achieving a specific learning criterion or leading to faster learning than another medium. No significant difference was found between Agent and Arrow Group in the levels of cognitive efficiency. Yet, the result suggested potential benefit of an animated pedagogical agent for learners with little prior knowledge. The lowest prior knowledge learners who interacted with the animated pedagogical agent achieved higher learning scores at a given unit of mental effort than their counterparts, although the effect size was relatively small.