Emotion and Adaptation

A wide variety of media can be used in learning, including distance learning, such as print, lectures, conference sections, tutors, pictures, video, sound, and computers. Any one instance of distance learning will make choices among these media, perhaps using several.

Multimedia in Learning

The theory of affordances

Resena de la obra de Don A. Dillman, Jolene D. Smyth y Leah Melani Christian: Internet, Phone, Mail and Mixed-Mode Surveys. The Tailored Design Method. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons

https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/7287796.pdf

Internet, phone, mail and mixed-mode surveys: the tailored design method: reseña

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

http://home.fsw.vu.nl/ea.konijn/files/Realism_Published_2007.pdf

Realism is not all! User engagement with task-related interface characters

The nature of humans interacting with interface characters (e.g. embodied agents) is not well understood. The I-PEFiC model provides an integrative perspective on human-character interaction, assuming that the processes of engagement and user interaction exchange information in explaining user responses with interface characters. An experiment using the Sims2 game was conducted to test the effects of aesthetics (beautiful versus ugly, as engagement factor) and affordances (help versus obstacle, as interaction factor) of interface characters on use intentions, user engagement, and user satisfaction. Results of the experiment showed that (1) people tended to use helpful characters more than obstructing characters, (2) user engagement was enhanced by beauty and perceived affordance of the character whereas (3) intentions to use the character were not affected by good looks, and (4) the most satisfied users were those that were engaged with the character as well as willing to use it. This stresses the importance of enhancing affordances so to increase user engagement with interface characters. The I-PEFiC model provided a valuable framework to study the (interdependent) effects of relevant factors in human-character interaction.

/pdf/affective-affordances-improving-interface-character-2lk0vanik2.pdf

Affective affordances: Improving interface character engagement through interaction

We investigated the effects of facial similarity between users and embodied agents under different experimental conditions. Sixty-four undergraduates interacted with two different embodied agents: in one case the agent was designed to look somewhat similar to the user, and in the other case the agent was designed to look dissimilar. We varied between subjects how helpful the agent was for a given task. Results showed that the facial similarity manipulation sometimes affected participants' responses, even though they did not consciously detect the similarity. Specifically, when the agent was helpful, facial similarity increased participantsi ratings of involvement. However, when exposed to unhelpful agents, male participants had negative responses to the similar-looking agent compared to the dissimilar one. These results suggest that using facially similar embodied agents has a potential large downside if that embodied agent is perceived to be unhelpful.

/pdf/effects-of-facial-similarity-on-user-responses-to-embodied-5vfa0z3yhn.pdf

Effects of facial similarity on user responses to embodied agents

Fictional characters (PCs) and mediated persons in literature, theater, film, art, TV, and digital media fulfill basic psychological functions, although the processes involved remain unspecified. Departing from identification and empathy hypotheses, a new context-sensitive model draws upon similarity studies, empirical aesthetics, persuasion, emotion, and social psychology. The Perceiving and Experiencing Fictional Characters model (PEFiC-model) has three phases. During encoding, observers judge FCs in terms of ethics (good-bad), aesthetics (beautiful-ugly), and epistemics (realistic-unrealistic). Comparison entails appraisals of personal relevance as well as valence towards and (dis)similarity between the dramatis personae and the self. In the response phase, appreciation of FCs is a trade-off between the parallel, unipolar processes of involvement and distance. Intricate involvement-distance conflicts occur when subjective norms disagree with ingroup norms. Furthermore, features participate in multiple (fuzzy) sets (e.g., partly good and partly bad). PEFiC can handle complex responses towards representations of (non-existent) others, such as attractive dissimilarity, the beauty in ugliness, the appeal of negative experiences, and fascination for evil, as well as mixed emotions, ambivalence, and neutral end-states that actually conceal emotional confusion.

Perceiving and experiencing fictional characters: an integrative account

Stylistic differences among poets are usually sought in sound and semantics. In human analysis, the criteria for recognizing stylistic differences are manifold and intermingled. This study demonstrates that successful identification of poets based on their work is possible using one criterion: letter sequences. Poets show preferences for certain letter combinations, which are unique to their writing style. Using this criterion in machine computation demonstrates that semantics are not needed to identify poets correctly, and that, as a concession to utter parsimony, one minimal criterion of unique letter sequences is enough to fingerprint an author. A small sample of the work of three Dutch poets was used: Bloem (1887-1966), Slauerhoff (1898-1936), and Lucebert (1924-94). This sample formed the training set for the neural network program to analyse the unique letter patterns for each poet. Next, the program was fed a set of new poems, for which the author was to be identified. In choosing between two poets, the program succeeded in identifying the poet correctly for 80-90% of the new poems. When the choice was between three poets, the score was ∼70% correct. Since raw ASCII files are sufficient as input, and human pre-coding is unnecessary, neural network analysis of letter sequences may turn out to be a powerful tool in categorization and identification problems, such as genre, stylistics, and plagiarism

Johan F. Hoorn

Papers

Realism is not all! User engagement with task-related interface characters

Affective affordances: Improving interface character engagement through interaction

Effects of facial similarity on user responses to embodied agents

Perceiving and experiencing fictional characters: an integrative account

Neural network identification of poets using letter sequences