Persona effect: Affective impact of animated pedagogical agents

Abstract

Animated pedagogical agents that inhabit interactive learning environments can exhibit strikingly lifelike behaviors. In addition to providing problem-solving advice in response to students' activities in the learning environment, these agents may also be able to play a powerful motivational role. To design the most effective agent-based learning environment software, it is essential to understand how students perceive an animated pedagogical agent with regard to affective dimensions such as encouragement, utility, credibility, and clarity. This paper describes a study of the affective impact of animated pedagogical agents on students' learning experiences. One hundred middle school students interacted with animated pedagogical agents to assess their perception of agents' affective characteristics. The study revealed the persona effect, which is that the presence of a lifelike character in an interactive learning environment - even one that is not expressive - can have a strong positive effect on student's perception of their learning experience. The study also demonstrates the interesting effect of multiple types of explanatory behaviors on both affective perception and learning performance.