The Impact of Affect-Aware Support on Learning Tasks that Differ in Their Cognitive Demands

This paper investigates the effect of affect-aware support on learning tasks that differ in their cognitive demands. We conducted a study with the iTalk2learn platform where students are undertaking fractions tasks of varying difficulty and assigned in one of two groups; one group used the iTalk2learn platform that included the affect-aware support, whereas in the other group the affect-aware support was switched off and support was provided based on students’ performance only. We investigated the hypothesis that affect-aware support has a more pronounced effect when the cognitive demands of the tasks are higher. The results suggest that students that undertook the more challenging tasks were significantly more in-flow and less confused in the group where affect-aware support was provided than students who were supported based on their performance only