Role of Positive and Negative Emotions in Collaborative Knowledge Construction

Abstract

The present study continues the author’s previous work (Nada et al., 2012, in Japanese) on third graders’ knowledge acquisition process and how that is linked to emotions. In the present study, the experimental conditions were (a) a condition in which the participants’ ideas were initially rejected but later positively affirmed (NP condition), (b) a condition in which the participants’ ideas were initially positively affirmed but later rejected (PN condition), and (c) a condition in which positive, affirmative responses were given to the participants throughout the experiment (PP condition). The participants, 43 third-grade pupils (25 boys, 18 girls), were assigned in approximately equal numbers to the 3 conditions. The testing procedure was the same as that used in Nada et al. (2012). The results suggested that the children in the PP condition demonstrated the highest level of knowledge acquisition, followed by those in the NP condition and then those in the PN condition. Additionally, an index of proactivity was highest in the participants in the PP condition, suggesting that positive affirmation may play an important role in improving cognitive flexibility in the process of acquiring interactive knowledge. This does not deny the contributions of nega-tive emotions to the learning process. As suggested by the results of the participants in the NP condition, negative emotions may foster self-monitoring, which may promote knowledge acquisition to some extent.