Liu Zhihong, Wang Zhenhong
School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China.
Shaanxi Provincial Key Research Center of Child Mental and Behavioral Health, Xi'an 710062, China.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2025 Mar 20;15(3):397. doi: 10.3390/bs15030397.
Previous studies have demonstrated that emotional design can enhance multimedia learning outcomes. However, it is unknown whether task difficulty moderates the effect of emotional design on multimedia learning outcomes. This study aimed to explore this issue with the emotional design of multimedia learning materials in middle school mathematics probability knowledge learning. A 2 (emotional design vs. neutral design) × 3 (low, medium, and high task difficulty) between-subjects design was used to examine how emotional design affects multimedia learning outcomes in 180 middle school students under different levels of task difficulty. The results showed that the emotional design significantly elicited positive emotions among learners. Emotional design significantly only enhanced multimedia learning outcomes under medium-task-difficulty conditions ( < 0.001, = 0.09), but not under low- and high-task-difficulty conditions. These findings suggest that task difficulty is a crucial moderator of the effect of emotional design on multimedia learning outcomes.
先前的研究表明，情感设计可以提高多媒体学习效果。然而，任务难度是否会调节情感设计对多媒体学习效果的影响尚不清楚。本研究旨在通过中学数学概率知识学习中的多媒体学习材料的情感设计来探讨这一问题。采用2（情感设计与中性设计）×3（低、中、高任务难度）被试间设计，考察在不同任务难度水平下，情感设计如何影响180名中学生的多媒体学习效果。结果表明，情感设计显著地引发了学习者的积极情绪。情感设计仅在中等任务难度条件下显著提高了多媒体学习效果（<0.001，=0.09），而在低任务难度和高任务难度条件下则没有。这些发现表明，任务难度是情感设计对多媒体学习效果影响的关键调节因素。
