Facilitating interprofessional affective learning in health professional students through digital client documentation: a comparison of simulation modes.

Digital Interprofessional Learning Client Documentation (D-IPL Client Docs) is an initiative designed to develop student interprofessional communication skills through electronic record writing and a virtual simulation (VS) or live virtual simulation (LVS) case conference. The aims of the study were to (a) identify whether D-IPL Client Docs supports student learning in the affective domain and (b) compare the learning outcomes for students participating in the VS versus the LVS case conference. Data were drawn from 83 Bachelor of Social Work students who had participated with other health professional students in the D-IPL Client Docs activities. The reflective journals submitted by this cohort of social work students were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively using the Griffith University Affective Learning Scale. Qualitative analyses revealed that the activities enabled students in both groups to learn about themselves, their roles, and the roles of others, and the benefits of interprofessional collaboration in optimizing client outcomes. Quantitatively, the VS mode appeared to be more effective in supporting students to develop higher order affective learning; however, the effect size was small. Future studies should involve a larger sample size and include students from various professions to ascertain the transferability of findings.

A machine learning enabled affective E-learning system model.

The purpose of this study is to propose an e-learning system model for learning content personalisation based on students' emotions. The proposed system collects learners' brainwaves using a portable Electroencephalogram and processes them via a supervised machine learning algorithm, named K-nearest neighbours (KNN), to recognise real-time emotional status. Besides, it uses a reinforcement learning approach to analyse the learners' emotional states and automatically recommend the best-fitted content that keeps the students in a positive mood. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated in two forms: 1) the system performance and 2) student engagement, satisfaction, and learning. A convenience sampling method is used to select 30 students from the pollution of 281 PartII-undergraduate students who study computer science during the 2020-21 academic year at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. The selected students are divided into homogenous control and experimental groups for learning English listening and reading skills. According to the machine learning results, the trained KNN recognises the emotional states with an accuracy of 74.3%, the precision of 70.8%, and recall of 69.3%. In addition, the results of the t-Test demonstrate that the proposed e-learning system model has no significant impact on learners' learning and engagement but enhances the student's satisfaction compared to traditional e-learning systems (p < 0.05).

Affective learning in adults with intellectual disability: an experiment using evaluative conditioning.

BACKGROUND: Evaluative conditioning is a form of affective learning in which initially neutral stimuli acquire an affective value through association with negative or positive stimuli. Recent research shows an important role for cognitive resources in this type of learning. This form of affective learning has rarely been studied in intellectual disability (ID). METHOD: We examined evaluative conditioning in 16 adults with mild to moderate ID compared to age- and gender-matched control participants. Neutral shapes and symbols were repeatedly paired with positive, neutral or negative unconditioned stimuli (faces or International Affective Picture System images). There was also an extinction phase. RESULTS: There was significant acquisition of conditioning in both groups. Stimuli paired with positive images were evaluated more positively, and stimuli paired with negative images were evaluated more negatively. Post-extinction ratings however show that these novel affective associations were not maintained by individuals with ID as much as by individuals in the control group. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that ID modulates some aspects of affective learning but not necessarily initial preference acquisition.

Gender moderates the effect of oxytocin on social judgments.

OBJECTIVE: The neuropeptide oxytocin is implicated in social processing, and recent research has begun to explore how gender relates to the reported effects. This study examined the effects of oxytocin on social affective perception and learning. METHODS: Forty-seven male and female participants made judgments of faces during two different tasks, after being randomized to either double-blinded intranasal oxytocin or placebo. In the first task, "unseen" affective stimuli were presented in a continuous flash suppression paradigm, and participants evaluated faces paired with these stimuli on dimensions of competence, trustworthiness, and warmth. In the second task, participants learned affective associations between neutral faces and affective acts through a gossip learning procedure and later made affective ratings of the faces. RESULTS: In both tasks, we found that gender moderated the effect of oxytocin, such that male participants in the oxytocin condition rated faces more negatively, compared with placebo. The opposite pattern of findings emerged for female participants: they rated faces more positively in the oxytocin condition, compared with placebo. CONCLUSIONS: These findings contribute to a small but growing body of research demonstrating differential effects of oxytocin in men and women.

How did you perform? Investigating football players' perception of self-regulated passing performances under auditory noise environments.

Introduction: This paper deals with the question on how sport performances may be influenced by internal, emotional processes, which stem from outside feedback. Methods: In terms of methods, players' subjective performance ratings for four experimental auditory cue conditions were examined; these included both 'positive' and 'negative' stadium noise, 'no (auditory) conditions,' and a control/'baseline' condition. This resulted in a qualitative-analytic data set that was obtained succeeding each auditory cue condition using a unique football training machine (i.e., known as 'Footbonaut'). Without having received any coaching/performance feedback, players were asked to rate and individually comment on their perceived performance ratings for each experimental auditory condition. Results: Findings indicate stronger and more significant correlations between auditory conditions and subjective ratings compared to the non-auditory condition and its subjective rating. Furthermore, data provides initial insight into players' emotional experiences during each of the practice conditions. Discussion: These noteworthy findings on players' abilities to accurately judge their performances based on selfmonitoring and intrinsic feedback are discussed from an Ecological Dynamics perspective, linked to a Nonlinear Pedagogy for coaching. Here, representative and affective learning designs for skill learning and performance preparation are presented. Finally, a hypothetical catalyst effect of auditory stadium noise on subjective performance rating is proposed.

A comparison of the learning effects between TGfU-SE and TGfU on learning motivation, sport enjoyment, responsibility, and game performance in physical education.

Background: Both the Sport Education (SE) model and Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) have been connected to the theory of situated learning, which is a game-centered curricular model. TGfU emphasizes tactical awareness, decision making, and skill execution. The SE model provides a complete season during physical education (PE) lessons. Therefore, it is worth exploring the integration of TGfU with SE (TGfU-SE) model in PE courses, and whether the hybrid TGfU-SE model can achieve better learning effects for students than the TGfU model alone. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to compare the difference in learning effects between the TGfU-SE model and the TGfU model on students' learning motivation, sport enjoyment, responsibility, and game performance. Methods: This study used a quasi-experimental design to compare different learning effects between the experimental group (TGfU-SE) and the control group (TGfU). The participants lived in Taiwan, including two junior high school PE teachers and four PE classes with a total of 90 students (TGfU-SE group, n = 46; TGfU group, n = 44). Each teacher taught two PE classes, one with an experimental group and one with a control group. This study used four research instruments, including the Responsibility Scale in Physical Education (RSPE), Learning Motivation Scale in Physical Education (LMSPE), Sport Enjoyment Scale in Physical Education (SESPE), and Game Performance assessment instrument (GPAI). Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and the independent t-test were used to analyze the data. Results: The results of this study showed that the TGfU-SE model had more positive learning effects on students' learning motivation, sport enjoyment, responsibility, and game performance than the TGfU model. Conclusion: we concluded that the TGfU-SE model had a more positive influence on students' learning performance than the TGfU model. It is suggested that the hybrid TGfU-SE model could be implemented effectively in the PE curriculum.

Sensitivity and specificity in affective and social learning in adolescence.

Adolescence is a period of heightened affective and social sensitivity. In this review we address how this increased sensitivity influences associative learning. Based on recent evidence from human and rodent studies, as well as advances in computational biology, we suggest that, compared to other age groups, adolescents show features of heightened Pavlovian learning but tend to perform worse than adults at instrumental learning. Because Pavlovian learning does not involve decision-making, whereas instrumental learning does, we propose that these developmental differences might be due to heightened sensitivity to rewards and threats in adolescence, coupled with a lower specificity of responding. We discuss the implications of these findings for adolescent mental health and education.

The role of teacher empathy and immediacy in Chinese EFL students' affective learning outcomes: unveiling the associations.

Introduction: The positive influences of teacher-student interpersonal communication skills on second language (L2) students have been considerably endorsed in the literature. However, the contribution of teacher empathy and immediacy behaviors, as realizations of such skills, to students' affective learning outcomes is unaddressed in L2 research. Methods: To fill this gap, three scales were distributed among a sample of 350 Chinese EFL students to see if teachers' empathy and immediacy correlate with and predict students' affective learning outcomes. Results: The results of correlation analysis revealed strong and positive relationships among teacher empathy, teacher immediacy, and learners' affective learning outcomes. Moreover, the results of multiple regression indicated that Chinese EFL teachers' empathy and immediacy could predict about 65 and 60% of changes in the learners' affective learning outcomes, respectively. Discussion: Implications of the study for EFL teachers' interpersonal communication skills development and emotional literacy are discussed. Future research trends are also presented at the end of the article.

The effect of affective learning on alexithymia, empathy, and attitude toward disabled persons in nursing students: A randomized controlled study.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the effect of affective learning on alexithymia, empathy, and attitude toward disabled persons in nursing students. DESIGN AND METHODS: This prospective, randomized, controlled trial study was implemented among 70 nursing students. Based on transformative learning theory, the affective learning method was applied to the intervention group. Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS), Empathic Tendency Scale (ETS), and Attitudes Toward Disabled Person Scale (ATDPS) were administered to both groups. RESULTS: The intervention group showed a statistically and significantly lower score at TAS and higher score at ATDPS compared to the control group, whereas no statistically significant difference was found in ETS score. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Affective learning methods could be implemented in the nursing course for improving students' attitude toward disabled persons, and reducing alexithymia.

On the Role of Teacher-Student Rapport and Teacher Support as Predictors of Chinese EFL Students' Affective Learning.

Students' affective learning is critical for their academic success; therefore, considerable attention has been devoted to the role of various student-related and teacher-related factors as predictors of student affective learning. Notwithstanding, the impact of two important teacher-related factors, namely teacher-student rapport and teacher support, has not been adequately researched. To address this gap, the present study sought to explore the role of teacher support and teacher-student rapport in Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) students' affective learning. To do so, three valid inventories of the variables were administered to 497 Chinese EFL students. Performing correlational analyses, favorable associations were found between teacher-student rapport, teacher support, and student affective learning. The predictive power of teacher support and teacher-student rapport was assessed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Chinese EFL students' affective learning was shown to be largely influenced by teacher-student rapport and teacher support. The pedagogical implications and future directions are also discussed.

Enhanced fear acquisition in individuals with evening chronotype. A virtual reality fear conditioning/extinction study.

Circadian rhythms have received increasing attention within the context of mental disorders. Evening chronotype has been associated with enhanced risk to develop anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The classical fear conditioning paradigm is a powerful tool to reveal key mechanisms of anxiety and PTSD. We used this paradigm to study the neurocognitive basis of the association between chronotype and fear responses in healthy humans. 20 participants with evening chronotype and 20 controls (i.e., intermediate chronotype) completed a 2-day Pavlovian fear learning and extinction virtual reality task. Participants received fear conditioning, and extinction learning on day 1. Extinction memory recall was tested on day 2. To address interactions between chronotype and time of day of the fear conditioning, and extinction performance, half of the participants were tested in the morning, and the other half in the evening. Skin conductance response (SCR) and subjective fear ratings were measured as primary outcomes. Chronotype was established via the morningness-eveningness questionnaire (MEQ). We found an overall higher SCR for fear acquisition in participants with the evening chronotype profile, compared to controls. Moreover, the higher the MEQ scores -indicative of less eveningness - the lower the SCR was. No effects of chronotype were found for extinction and extinction recall. The higher vulnerability of the evening chronotype for anxiety and related disorders may thus be explained by enhanced fear acquisition of this group.

Using Visual Thinking Strategies to Support Development of Pharmacy Student Competency in Person-Centered Care.

Objective. To evaluate the introduction of 10 Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) sessions into year 2 of a Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) program with the aim of assisting students in developing the skills and attitudes required for inclusive practice.Methods. The evaluation used a cross-sectional study design. All members of the first two successive student cohorts to complete multiple VTS sessions completed a 38-item online reflective questionnaire exploring student perceptions of competency development, transference, and session acceptability. Students were asked for their consent to include their responses in a research study. Closed-question responses were analyzed to produce descriptive statistics. Free-text responses were categorized and quantified using an inductive approach and manifest content analysis.Results. Fifty-six percent of the students (98 of 174) allowed their responses to be included in the study. Students generally believed the sessions had supported their development of person-centred communication, cultural competence, and critical thinking skills. The minimum level of agreement that improvement in an area occurred was 74.5%. Free-text responses revealed the perception of additional skill and attitude development. Sixty percent of participants had thought about the VTS questions or used what they had learned in the VTS sessions in other settings. Eighty-six percent of students agreed that content on VTS should remain in the BPharm curriculum.Conclusion. Incorporating regular VTS sessions into the second year of a BPharm program was acceptable to students. Data suggest that inclusion of multiple VTS sessions is a valuable addition to the pharmacy curriculum, offering affective learning experiences which support development and transference of key skills and attitudes relating to the provision of inclusive person-centred care.

Cognitive and Affective Learning in English as a Foreign Language/English as a Second Language Instructional-Learning Contexts: Does Teacher Immediacy Matter?

A noteworthy frame of the literature has maintained the idea that communication in the classroom is dominant in language education, and in the process of language learning, teachers as an important figure may apply several ways to develop interpersonal relationships and social manners, such as teacher immediacy that has been established to support affective and cognitive learning in instructional settings. Therefore, this theoretical review tries to systematically refocus on the existing literature about teacher immediacy and its types, such as non-verbal and verbal, and their significant connections with affective and cognitive education. To this end, this review focuses on social behavior to review the eminence of teacher immediacy in the classroom and unquestionably exemplify their relationship with affective and cognitive learning. As a final fact, this review has been intended to consider the prevailing literature about teacher behavior, and suggestions and recommendations have been presented correspondingly for language teaching stakeholders in the educational setting.

Learning the affective value of people: More than affect-based mechanisms.

People's ability to learn about the affective value of others is impressive. However, it is unclear whether this learning solely reflects general affect-based processes or a mixture of affect-based and person-attribution processes. Consistent with the former possibility, people's ability to learn the affective value of people and places have been shown to be comparable (Falvello, Vinson, Ferrari, & Todorov, 2015). To investigate whether general affect-based processes are sufficient to account for this kind of learning, we presented participants with images paired with valenced statements that were either relevant (e.g., a person statement with a person image) or irrelevant (e.g., a person statement with a non-person image). After this presentation, participants evaluated the goodness or badness of the images. In Experiment 1, we found that the learning effects for faces and places were comparable and occurred only when the statements were relevant. However, when we presented the images with multiple statements of the same valence (Experiments 2-4), we found that places acquired affective value from both relevant and irrelevant statements. In contrast, faces were less likely to acquire affective value from irrelevant statements. Our findings suggest that although general affect-based processes might be sufficient to account for affective learning of places, affective learning of faces might involve both affect-based and person-attribution processes.

The amygdala instructs insular feedback for affective learning.

Affective responses depend on assigning value to environmental predictors of threat or reward. Neuroanatomically, this affective value is encoded at both cortical and subcortical levels. However, the purpose of this distributed representation across functional hierarchies remains unclear. Using fMRI in mice, we mapped a discrete cortico-limbic loop between insular cortex (IC), central amygdala (CE), and nucleus basalis of Meynert (NBM), which decomposes the affective value of a conditioned stimulus (CS) into its salience and valence components. In IC, learning integrated unconditioned stimulus (US)-evoked bodily states into CS valence. In turn, CS salience in the CE recruited these CS representations bottom-up via the cholinergic NBM. This way, the CE incorporated interoceptive feedback from IC to improve discrimination of CS valence. Consequently, opto-/chemogenetic uncoupling of hierarchical information flow disrupted affective learning and conditioned responding. Dysfunctional interactions in the IC↔CE/NBM network may underlie intolerance to uncertainty, observed in autism and related psychiatric conditions.

Sensor Measures of Affective Leaning.

The aim of this study was to predict self-report data for self-regulated learning with sensor data. In a longitudinal study multichannel data were collected: self-report data with questionnaires and embedded experience samples as well as sensor data like electrodermal activity (EDA) and electroencephalography (EEG). 100 students from a private university in Germany performed a learning experiment followed by final measures of intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy and gained knowledge. During the learning experiment psychophysiological data like EEG were combined with embedded experience sampling measuring motivational states like affect and interest every 270 s. Results of machine learning models show that consumer grade wearables for EEG and EDA failed to predict embedded experience sampling. EDA failed to predict outcome measures as well. This gap can be explained by some major technical difficulties, especially by lower quality of the electrodes. Nevertheless, an average activation of all EEG bands at T7 (left-hemispheric, lateral) can predict lower intrinsic motivation as outcome measure. This is in line with the personality system interactions (PSI) theory of Julius Kuhl. With more advanced sensor measures it might be possible to track affective learning in an unobtrusive way and support micro-adaptation in a digital learning environment.

Biosensor Real-Time Affective Analytics in Virtual and Mixed Reality Medical Education Serious Games: Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND: The role of emotion is crucial to the learning process, as it is linked to motivation, interest, and attention. Affective states are expressed in the brain and in overall biological activity. Biosignals, like heart rate (HR), electrodermal activity (EDA), and electroencephalography (EEG) are physiological expressions affected by emotional state. Analyzing these biosignal recordings can point to a person's emotional state. Contemporary medical education has progressed extensively towards diverse learning resources using virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) applications. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to study the efficacy of wearable biosensors for affect detection in a learning process involving a serious game in the Microsoft HoloLens VR/MR platform. METHODS: A wearable array of sensors recording HR, EDA, and EEG signals was deployed during 2 educational activities conducted by 11 participants of diverse educational level (undergraduate, postgraduate, and specialist neurosurgeon doctors). The first scenario was a conventional virtual patient case used for establishing the personal biosignal baselines for the participant. The second was a case in a VR/MR environment regarding neuroanatomy. The affective measures that we recorded were EEG (theta/beta ratio and alpha rhythm), HR, and EDA. RESULTS: Results were recorded and aggregated across all 3 groups. Average EEG ratios of the virtual patient (VP) versus the MR serious game cases were recorded at 3.49 (SD 0.82) versus 3.23 (SD 0.94) for students, 2.59 (SD 0.96) versus 2.90 (SD 1.78) for neurosurgeons, and 2.33 (SD 0.26) versus 2.56 (SD 0.62) for postgraduate medical students. Average alpha rhythm of the VP versus the MR serious game cases were recorded at 7.77 (SD 1.62) µV versus 8.42 (SD 2.56) µV for students, 7.03 (SD 2.19) µV versus 7.15 (SD 1.86) µV for neurosurgeons, and 11.84 (SD 6.15) µV versus 9.55 (SD 3.12) µV for postgraduate medical students. Average HR of the VP versus the MR serious game cases were recorded at 87 (SD 13) versus 86 (SD 12) bpm for students, 81 (SD 7) versus 83 (SD 7) bpm for neurosurgeons, and 81 (SD 7) versus 77 (SD 6) bpm for postgraduate medical students. Average EDA of the VP versus the MR serious game cases were recorded at 1.198 (SD 1.467) µS versus 4.097 (SD 2.79) µS for students, 1.890 (SD 2.269) µS versus 5.407 (SD 5.391) µS for neurosurgeons, and 0.739 (SD 0.509) µS versus 2.498 (SD 1.72) µS for postgraduate medical students. The variations of these metrics have been correlated with existing theoretical interpretations regarding educationally relevant affective analytics, such as engagement and educational focus. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that this novel sensor configuration can lead to credible affective state detection and can be used in platforms like intelligent tutoring systems for providing real-time, evidence-based, affective learning analytics using VR/MR-deployed medical education resources.

Taking Affective Learning in Digital Education One Step Further: Trainees' Affective Characteristics Predicting Multicontextual Pre-training Transfer Intention.

The past decades have shown an accelerated development of technology-enhanced or digital education. Although an important and recognized precondition for study success, still little attention has been paid to examining how an affective learning climate can be fostered in online training programs. Besides gaining insight into the dynamics of affective learning itself it is of vital importance to know what predicts trainees' intention to transfer new knowledge and skills to other contexts. The present study investigated the influence of five affective learner characteristics from the transfer literature (learner readiness, motivation to learn, expected positive outcomes, expected negative outcomes, personal capacity) on trainees' pre-training transfer intention. Participants were 366 adult students enrolled in an online course in information literacy in a distance learning environment. As information literacy is a generic competence, applicable in various contexts, we developed a novel multicontextual transfer perspective and investigated within one single study the influence of the abovementioned variables on pre-training transfer intention for both the students' Study and Work contexts. The hypothesized model has been tested using structural equation modeling. The results showed that motivation to learn, expected positive personal outcomes, and learner readiness were the strongest predictors. Results also indicated the benefits of gaining pre-training insight into the specific characteristics of multiple transfer contexts, especially when education in generic competences is involved. Instructional designers might enhance study success by taking affective transfer elements and multicontextuality into account when designing digital education.

The timing-dependent effects of stress-induced cortisol release on evaluative conditioning.

The neuro-physiological response to stress has far-reaching implications for learning and memory processes. Here, we examined whether and how the stress-induced release of cortisol, following the socially-evaluated cold pressor test, influenced the acquisition of preferences in an evaluative conditioning (EC) procedure. We found that when the stressor preceded the evaluation phase, cortisol responders showed decreased evaluative conditioning effects. By contrast, impairing effects of a stressor-induced cortisol release before encoding were not found. Moreover, explicit memory was not found to be affected by the stressor or its timing. Implications of the timing-dependent effects of stress-induced cortisol release on EC and the relation between stress and associative memory are discussed.

Low Perceived Self-Efficacy Impedes Discriminative Fear Learning.

Perceived self-efficacy refers to a subject's expectation about the outcomes his/her behavior will have in a challenging situation. Low self-efficacy has been implicated in the origins and maintenance of phobic behavior. Correlational studies suggest an association between perceived self-efficacy and learning. The experimental manipulation of perceived self-efficacy offers an interesting approach to examine the impact of self-efficacy beliefs on cognitive and emotional functions. Recently, a positive effect of an experimentally induced increased self-efficacy on associative learning has been demonstrated. Changes in associative learning constitute a central hallmark of pathological fear and anxiety. Such alterations in the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear may be related to cognitive and neurobiological factors that predict a certain vulnerability to anxiety disorders. The present study builds on previous own work by investigating the effect of an experimentally induced low perceived self-efficacy on fear acquisition, extinction and extinction retrieval in a differential fear conditioning task. Our results suggest that a negative verbal feedback, which leads to a decreased self-efficacy, is associated with changes in the acquisition of conditioned fear. During fear acquisition, the negative verbal feedback group showed decreased discrimination of fear responses between the aversive and safe conditioned stimuli (CS) relative to a group receiving a neutral feedback. The effects of the negative verbal feedback on the acquisition of fear discrimination learning were indexed by an impaired ability to discriminate the probability of receiving a shock during acquisition upon presentation of the aversive (CS+) relative to the safe stimuli (CS-). However, the effects of low self-efficacy on discrimination learning were limited to fear acquisition. No differences between the groups were observed during extinction and extinction retrieval. Furthermore, analysis of other outcome measures, i.e., skin conductance responses and CS valence ratings, revealed no group differences during the different phases of fear conditioning. In conclusion, lower perceived self-efficacy alters cognitive/expectancy components of discrimination during fear learning but not evaluative components and physiological responding. The pattern of findings suggests a selective, detrimental role of low(er) self-efficacy on the subject's ability to learn the association between ambiguous cues and threat/safety.