Effects of students’ emotions on cognitive load and performance while using pen-tablets for learning Japanese writing: An investigation based on individual pen pressure parameters

尽管外语学习领域的大多数研究都集中在认知方面，但对学生的情感、情感在学习过程中的变化以及情感与认知之间的关系却知之甚少。此外，大多数关于学生在不同学习环境中使用教育技术时情绪的研究仍然依赖于自我报告的问卷调查。因此，本研究将通过不同难度的任务来诱发情绪，并通过实验来研究在使用手写板的教育技术进行日语书写学习的过程中，以学习为中心的离散情绪（即愉快情绪和挫折情绪）对认知负荷和学习成绩的影响。在学习过程中的几个时间点，将测量情绪的进展以及学生的认知负荷。此外，由于使用手写板可以追踪和分析动态书写参数，例如单笔的顺序和日文字母的书写速度，学生的学习表现将在学习过程中从书写准确性方面进行评估。除了性能的测量之外，以手写板的形式并入触觉感觉模态也被认为具有很大的连续情感检测潜力。因此，所提出的研究项目的一个具体特点是检查是否连续测量笔压力参数可以作为学生的情绪的指标。该项目的研究结果将揭示笔压参数作为更细粒度的情绪评估指标的潜力，并将提高对学生情绪状态与学习认知方面之间关系的理解。

Whereas most research in the field of foreign-language learning has concentrated on cognitive aspects, little is known about students’ emotions, about how these would morph over the course of learning, as well as about the relationship between emotions and cognition. Moreover, the majority of research on students’ emotions when using educational technologies in diverse learning contexts still relies on self-reported questionnaires. Thus, the proposed project focuses on the effect of discrete learning-centred emotions, namely enjoyment and frustration, on cognitive load and on learning performance during the process of learning Japanese letter writing with a pen tablet-based educational technology.In order to fulfil this aim, an experiment will be conducted in which emotions will be induced through varying degrees of task difficulty. The progress of emotions as well as students’ cognitive load will be measured on several time points during learning. Further, as the use of pen-tablets offer the possibility to track and to analyse dynamic writing parameters such as the order of single strokes and the writing velocity of Japanese letters, students’ learning performance in terms of their writing accuracy will be assessed over the course of learning. Besides the measurement of performance, the incorporation of a haptic sensory modality in the form of a pen tablet is also seen to have a lot of potential for continuous emotional detection. Thus, a specific characteristic of the proposed research project is to examine whether continuously measured pen pressure parameters can serve as indicators of students’ emotions. The findings of the project will shed light on the potential of pen pressure parameters as a more fine-grained evaluation metric of emotions and will improve the understanding of the relation between students’ emotional states and cognitive aspects for learning.