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The paper reports ongoing research toward the design of multimodal affective pedagogical agents that are effective for different types of learners and applications. In particular, the work reported in the paper investigated the extent to which the type of character design (realistic versus stylized) affects students’ perception of an animated agent’s facial emotions, and whether the effects are moderated by learner characteristics (e.g. gender). Eighty-two participants viewed 10 animation clips featuring a stylized character exhibiting 5 different emotions, e.g. happiness, sadness, fear, surprise and anger (2 clips per emotion), and 10 clips featuring a realistic character portraying the same emotional states. The participants were asked to name the emotions and rate their sincerity, intensity, and typicality. The results indicated that for recognition, participants were slightly more likely to recognize the emotions displayed by the stylized agent, although the difference was not statistically significant. The stylized agent was on average rated significantly higher for facial emotion intensity, whereas the differences in ratings for typicality and sincerity across all emotions were not statistically significant. A significant difference in ratings was shown in regard to sadness (within typicality), happiness (within sincerity), fear, anger, sadness and happiness (within intensity) with the stylized agent rated higher. Gender was not a significant correlate across all emotions or for individual emotions.
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This content will become publicly available on January 13, 2026
Achievement emotions in kindergarten: the association of solution accuracy with discrete joy, sadness, and surprise
Children experience a variety of emotions in achievement settings. Yet, mathematics-related emotions other than anxiety are understudied, especially for young children entering primary school. The current study reports the prevalence and intensity of six basic, discrete achievement emotions (joy/happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, and disgust) expressed on the faces of 15 kindergarten-aged children as they solved increasingly complex arithmetic story problems in a 3-month teaching experiment. We also examine how the extent to which the expressed emotions influenced arithmetic accuracy at the end of an instructional session at the beginning, middle, and end of the teaching experiment. Through the application ofFaceReader9, the three most intensely expressed emotions at the launch of the instructional sessions were happiness/joy, sadness, and surprise. Using functional regressions, these expressed achievement emotions predicted arithmetic accuracy at the end of the instructional session. However, when the effect of session over time was added to the model, the relationship between happiness/joy and accuracy, as well as sadness and accuracy, became non-significant. In contrast, the relationship between surprise and accuracy remained significant. We discuss potential explanations for these patterns of significance and non-significance. This study serves as a critical first step in clarifying how emotions contribute to problem-solving behavior as we grapple with how to respond to the sometimes intense, but always present emotions of young learners in ways that are affirming, as well as mathematically productive and generative.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2321088
- PAR ID:
- 10631557
- Publisher / Repository:
- Frontiers Media SA
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Volume:
- 15
- ISSN:
- 1664-1078
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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