A Kind Pedagogical Agent is More Effective? Effect of Animated Pedagogical Agents Attitudes on Student Learning, Engagement, Emotions and Anxiety

• Otávio B. Azevedo UNISINOS
• Patricia A. Jaques UNISINOS http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2933-1052

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/cbie.sbie.2020.762

Abstract

The interest in animated agents with affective dimensions has increased considerably in recent years. However, there was no comparison of the effects of animated pedagogical agents with opposite attitudes (such as friendly and direct, for example) and neutral (without emotions). Thus, the objective of this work is to verify the impact of the agents attitudes on students in relation to learning, engagement, emotions and state of anxiety. To achieve this goal, an agent with friendly, direct and neutral attitudes was developed and integrated with the PAT2Math. This system was used in an experimental evaluation involving 71 students of the seventh grade of elementary school, which were distributed in three groups, one for each agent's attitude. The results indicated that the impact of the friendly agent on students was more positive than other attitudes.

Keywords: Animated Pedagogical Agent, Affective Computing, Attitude, Intelligent Tutoring System, Learning, Engagement, Emotion, Anxiety

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