The current study was conducted to investigate the effects of an animated agent's presence and different types of feedback on learning, motivation and cognitive load in a multimedia-learning ...environment designed to teach science content. Participants were 135 college students randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions formed by a 2 × 2 factorial design with agent presence as one factor (agent vs. no-agent) and type of verbal feedback it provided as the other factor (simple feedback vs. elaborate feedback). Results revealed that participants who learned with the animated agent that delivered elaborate feedback had significantly higher scores on a learning measure compared to participants who learned with an agent that provided simple feedback. The results are interpreted from both social agency and cognitive load theoretical perspectives.
•Agents providing elaborate feedback outperformed agents offering simple feedback.•The type of feedback provided by pedagogical agents moderated their effectiveness.•An agent's visual presence and verbal social cues optimize learning.
BACKGROUND:Higher cumulative burden of depression among people with HIV (PWH) is associated with poorer health outcomes; however, longitudinal relationships with neurocognition are unclear. This ...study examined hypotheses that among PWH, (1) higher cumulative burden of depression would relate to steeper declines in neurocognition, and (2) visit-to-visit depression severity would relate to fluctuations in neurocognition within persons.
SETTING:Data were collected at a university-based research center from 2002 to 2016.
METHODS:Participants included 448 PWH followed longitudinally. All participants had >1 visit (M = 4.97; SD = 3.53) capturing depression severity (Beck Depression Inventory-II) and neurocognition (comprehensive test battery). Cumulative burden of depression was calculated using an established method that derives weighted depression severity scores by time between visits and total time on study. Participants were categorized into low (67%), medium (15%), and high (18%) depression burden. Multilevel modeling examined between- and within-person associations between cumulative depression burden and neurocognition over time.
RESULTS:The high depression burden group demonstrated steeper global neurocognitive decline compared with the low depression burden group (b = −0.100, P = 0.001); this was driven by declines in executive functioning, delayed recall, and verbal fluency. Within-person results showed that compared with visits when participants reported minimal depressive symptoms, their neurocognition was worse when they reported mild (b = −0.12, P = 0.04) or moderate-to-severe (b = −0.15, P = 0.03) symptoms; this was driven by worsened motor skills and processing speed.
CONCLUSIONS:High cumulative burden of depression is associated with worsening neurocognition among PWH, which may relate to poor HIV-related treatment outcomes. Intensive interventions among severely depressed PWH may benefit physical, mental, and cognitive health.
This study aimed to establish an accurate baseline for Facebook usage and to investigate its learning potential via biometric perspective. This was explored by asking college students to browse their ...own Facebook page and peruse the content while wearing a high-fidelity EEG headset to record brainwave activity they experienced. Their actions were then coded using the empirically based Interactive-Constructive-Active-Passive (ICAP) engagement model to identify elements that could potentially be leveraged for learning. Based on these results, Facebook does not seem to make an ideal learning platform, due to higher frustration levels during higher cognitive tasks compared to passively consuming personally relevant non-instructional content. However, it may have more positive impacts on learning as long as initial frustration level is transformed smoothly to engagement and motivation for some learning opportunities and activities.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Consistent with social agency theory, we hypothesized that learners who studied a set of worked-out examples involving proportional reasoning narrated by an animated agent with a human voice would ...perform better on near and far transfer tests and rate the speaker more positively compared to learners who studied the same set of examples narrated by an agent with a machine synthesized voice. This hypothesis was supported across two experiments, including one conducted in a high school computer classroom. Overall, the results are consistent with social agency theory that posits that social cues in multimedia messages, including the type of voice, can affect how much students like the speaker and how hard students try to understand the presented material.
Cognitive load research has shown that learning from worked-out examples, in comparison to problem solving, is very effective during the initial stages of cognitive skill acquisition. In later ...stages, however, solving problems is superior. In this contribution, theoretical analyses of different types of cognitive load and their changes over the stages of skill acquisition are presented. Two basic arguments are put forth: (a) Intrinsic cognitive load gradually decreases so that a gradual increase of problem-solving demands is possible without inducing cognitive overload. (b) In contrast to the earlier stages, different learner activities during the later stages constitute either germane or extraneous load, because different instructional goals are to be achieved. Based on these analyses, we propose a fading procedure in which problem-solving elements are successively integrated into example study until the learners are expected to solve problems on their own. Empirical evidence supporting this fading procedure is provided, and future research is proposed that focuses on how to ensure that the fading procedure is adaptive to the learners' prior knowledge levels.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Abstract Background Estimates of the prevalence of lifetime suicidal ideation and attempt, and risks for new-onset suicidality, among HIV-infected (HIV+) individuals are not widely available in the ...era of modern combined antiretroviral treatment (cART). Method Participants (n = 1560) were evaluated with a comprehensive battery of tests that included the depression and substance use modules of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) as part of a large prospective cohort study at six U.S. academic medical centers. Participants with possible lifetime depression (n = 981) were classified into five categories: 1) no thoughts of death or suicide (n = 352); 2) thoughts of death (n = 224); 3) thoughts of suicide (n = 99); 4) made a suicide plan (n = 102); and 5) attempted suicide (n = 204). Results Twenty-six percent (405/1560) of participants reported lifetime suicidal ideation and 13% (204/1560) reported lifetime suicide attempt. Participants who reported suicidal thoughts or plans, or attempted suicide, reported higher scores on the BDI-II (p < 0.0001), and higher rates of current major depressive disorder (p = 0.01), than those who did not. Attempters reported higher rates of lifetime substance abuse (p = 0.02) and current use of psychotropic medications (p = 0.01) than non-attempters. Limitations Study assessments focused on lifetime, rather than current, suicide. Data was not collected on the timing of ideation or attempt, frequency, or nature of suicide attempt. Conclusions High rates of lifetime suicidal ideation and attempt, and the relationship of past report with current depressed mood, suggest that mood disruption is still prevalent in HIV. Findings emphasize the importance of properly diagnosing and treating psychiatric comorbidities among HIV persons in the cART era.
US colleges presently face an academic plight; thousands of high school graduates are performing below the expected ability for college‐level mathematics. This paper describes an innovative approach ...intended to improve the mathematics performance of first‐year college students, at a large US university. The innovation involved the integration of faculty‐led instruction with technology‐enhanced learning (TEL). In this case, TEL refers to a sophisticated software program that delivers mathematics education using an adaptive, self‐paced, individualized, mastery‐based approach. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the extent to which TEL met the educational requirements of college students in need of remediation and to explore the effects of TEL on students' beliefs about their academic ability and academic behaviors (academic competence). The sample of 2880 included all the students enrolled in a single semester of remedial mathematics. Results suggested successful remediation, as indicated by the end‐of‐semester course completion rate, with 75% of students eligible to enroll in a first‐year sequence mathematics course and an additional 18% on track for eligibility by the following semester. TEL also appeared to have a positive, statistically significant effect on students' learning and academic competence. For these findings, we discuss study limitations and implications for future research.
The present study assesses the impact of methamphetamine (METH) on antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence among HIV+ persons, as well as examines the contribution of neurocognitive impairment and ...other neuropsychiatric factors i.e., major depressive disorder (MDD), antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), and attention deficit disorder (ADHD) for ART non-adherence. We examined HIV+ persons with DSM-IV-diagnosed lifetime history of METH abuse/dependence (HIV+ /METH+ ; n=67) as compared to HIV+ participants with no history of METH abuse/dependence (HIV+ /METH − ; n=50). Ancillary analyses compared these groups with a small group of HIV+ /METH+ persons with current METH abuse/dependence (HIV+ /CU METH+ ; n=8). Non-adherence was defined as self-report of any skipped ART dose in the last four days. Neurocognitive functioning was assessed with a comprehensive battery, covering seven neuropsychological domains. Lifetime METH diagnosis was associated with higher rates of detectable levels of plasma and CSF HIV RNA. When combing groups (i.e., METH+ and METH- participants), univariate analyses indicated co-occurring ADHD, ASPD, and MDD predicted ART non-adherence (p's < 0.10; not lifetime METH status or neurocognitive impairment). A significant multivariable model including these variables indicated that only MDD uniquely predicted ART non-adherence after controlling for the other variables (p<0.05). Ancillary analyses indicated that current METH users (use within 30 days) were significantly less adherent (50% prevalence of non-adherence) than lifetime METH+ users and HIV+ /METH− participants and that neurocognitive impairment was associated with non-adherence (p's < 0.05). METH use disorders are associated with worse HIV disease outcomes and ART medication non-adherence. Interventions often target substance use behaviors alone to enhance antiretroviral treatment outcomes; however, in addition to targeting substance use behaviors, interventions to improve ART adherence may also need to address coexisting neuropsychiatric factors and cognitive impairment to improve ART medication taking.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
The purpose of this study was to investigate the impacts of visual cues and different types of self-explanation prompts on learning, cognitive load, and intrinsic motivation in an interactive ...multimedia environment that was designed to deliver a computer-based lesson about the human cardiovascular system. A total of 126 college students were randomly assigned in equal numbers (N = 21) to one of the six conditions in a 2 × 3 factorial design with visual cueing (cueing vs. no cueing) and type of self-explanation prompts (prediction prompts vs. reflection prompts vs. no prompts) as the between-subjects factors. The results revealed that (a) participants presented with cued animations had significantly higher learning outcome scores than their peers who viewed uncued animations, and (b) cognitive load and intrinsic motivation had different impacts on learning outcomes due to the moderation effect of cueing. The results suggest that the cues may not only enhance learning, but also indirectly impact learning, cognitive load, and intrinsic motivation.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether playing Quest for the Code™, a computer game designed to teach children about asthma, would help healthy children acquire knowledge about and ...attitudes towards asthma and whether the beneficial effects would be maintained over time. The sample consisted of 155 children from four middle schools who were randomly assigned to play Quest for the Code™ or a game about nutrition serving as the control condition. Data were collected on knowledge and attitude pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at follow-up four weeks later. The results revealed that children who played Quest for the Code™ were more knowledgeable and had more positive attitudes than their peers in the control condition. And these benefits were maintained on follow-up tests. Our findings indicate the effectiveness and potential of using Quest for the Code™ as a tool for asthma education in a classroom setting.
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