Students and educators value the potential use of immersive virtual reality (IVR) in the classroom to teach academic content as it may increase interest and motivation to learn, which in turn may increase learning outcomes. However, one criticism is that features of IVR, such as extraneous sounds, animations, and interactions, that are not relevant to the content of the lesson, as well as the affective arousal associated with the use of IVR, may be distracting to learning processes. To examine this distraction hypothesis, two experiments were conducted in which students viewed a biology (Experiment 1) or history (Experiment 2) lesson either in IVR or in a desktop lesson containing the same content, with or without practice questions. In both experiments, students who viewed the lesson on the desktop in a PowerPoint (Experiment 1) or an interactive video (Experiment 2) outperformed those who viewed the IVR lessons on transfer tests. The desktop lessons led to higher cognitive engagement based on EEG measures in both experiments, and less self-reported extraneous cognitive load in Experiment 1. Participants also reported more high-arousal positive emotions after the IVR lessons in both experiments, and experienced higher physiological arousal based on heart-rate measures after the IVR lessons compared to the desktop lessons in Experiment 2. The same pattern of results was found when adjunct practice questions were or were not included in the lessons. Across both experiments, mediation analyses suggest that the negative relationship between instructional media and learning outcomes can be explained by self-reported cognitive processing or emotional arousal, particularly for retention test performance. Overall, immersive environments may create high emotional arousal and cognitive distraction during learning, which leads to poorer learning outcomes than desktop environments.

This research tested whether viewing an instructor draw diagrams improves learning from multimedia lessons compared to viewing equivalent static (e.g., already-drawn) diagrams. In a series of five experiments, participants viewed a short video-based lesson about how the Doppler effect works. Some students viewed already-drawn diagrams while listening to a concurrent oral explanation (control group), whereas other students listened to the same explanation while viewing the instructor actually draw the diagrams by hand (draw group). All students then completed retention and transfer tests on the material. Results of Experiment 1 indicated that watching the instructor draw diagrams (by viewing the instructor’s full body) resulted in significantly better transfer test performance than viewing already-drawn diagrams for learners with low prior knowledge (d = 0.58), but not for learners with high prior knowledge (d = -0.24). In Experiment 2, participants who watched the instructor draw diagrams (by only viewing the instructor’s hand) significantly outperformed the control group on the transfer test, regardless of prior knowledge (d = 0.35). In Experiment 3, participants who watched diagrams being drawn but without actually viewing the instructor’s hand did not significantly outperform the control group on the transfer test (d = -0.16). In Experiment 4, participants who observed the instructor draw diagrams with only the instructor’s hand visible significantly outperformed those who observed the instructor draw diagrams with the instructor’s body visible (d = 0.36). Finally, in Experiment 5, participants who viewed computer-based diagrams animated to match the act of drawing did not significantly outperform the control group (who viewed static computer-based diagrams) on the transfer test (d = 0.33). Overall, this research suggests that observing the instructor draw diagrams may promote learning in part because it takes advantage of basic principles of multimedia learning (such as signaling, segmenting, and temporal contiguity), but also because the presence of the instructor’s hand during drawing may provide an important social cue that motivates learners to make sense of the material.

Brain-training games are largely ineffective at improving player performance on cognitive measures, whereas action video games are largely effective at doing so, despite not being designed for that purpose. This dissertation draws upon the schema induction literature to propose that greater variety during the training phase is responsible for this discrepancy. Three studies training three different cognitive domains (mental rotation, working memory, and visual attention) were conducted comparing a condition that trained with relatively low variety of stimuli or environments to a condition that trained with relatively high variety. In Experiment I a group that trained mental rotation using three categories of shapes was compared to three groups that trained mental rotation with just one of the shape types on near, medium, and far transfer measures of mental rotation and spatial visualization. No difference was found between the low variety groups and the high variety groups on any of the cognitive posttest measures. In Experiment II a group that trained with an n-back using just letter stimuli was compared to a group that trained with an n-back using 6 types of stimuli and an inactive control group on near, medium and far transfer measures of working memory and fluid intelligence. The high variety group did not improve relative to the low variety group, and in some cases the low variety group improved more than the high variety group. In Experiment III participants with minimal prior experience with video games were assigned to play Call of Duty in a high variety condition, a low variety condition, or an inactive control condition. These groups were compared on their improvement on three measures of visual attention skill. In no case did the high variety group improve more than the low variety group. When the active groups were combined they did not improve more than the inactive control group. Across all three studies no benefit was found for the high variety condition relative to the low variety condition on related transfer measures of the respective cognitive skills. It is concluded that variety is not a useful addition to training interventions if the goal is to increase low-road transfer of

cognitive skills.

Lumosity is a subscription-based suite of online brain-training games, intended to improve cognitive skills. Due to an influx of products designed to train cognition through games such as Lumosity, it is important to determine their effectiveness for the sake of consumers and for the potential implications of any training effects for theories of transfer of cognitive skills. Two training experiments were conducted using the Lumosity platform. Participants were divided into three groups: those who trained with five attention games in Lumosity (attention group), those who trained with five flexibility games in Lumosity, (flexibility group), and an inactive control group. Participants were assessed on accuracy and response time for two cognitive tests of attention (Useful Field of View and Change Detection) and two cognitive tests of flexibility (Wisconsin Card Sort and Stroop) both before and after a training period. In Experiment 1, the training period was 3 hours spread over 4 sessions. In Experiment 2, the training period was 15 to 20 hours spread over 80 sessions. The trained groups did not show significantly greater pretest-to-posttest gains than the control group on any measures in either experiment, except in Experiment 2 the flexibility group significantly outperformed the other two groups on Stroop response time, which is very similar to one of the flexibility games. A practical implication concerns the lack of evidence for the effectiveness of brain training games to improve cognitive skills. A theoretical implication concerns the domain-specificity of cognitive skill learning from brain training games.

Learning in a multimedia environment puts many demands on a learner’s limited working memory, but this can become even more demanding as the level of distraction increases in a lesson. What has not been investigated much in previous literature is whether higher levels of distraction in lessons are more harmful to some learners than others. This series of studies investigates how individual differences in the ability to manage incoming information (i.e., executive function) and the ability to hold incoming information (i.e., working memory capacity) play a role in learning across lessons with various amounts and types of distractions. Experiment 1 investigated the role that individual differences in managing and holding incoming information play in learning from online multimedia lessons with various amounts of verbal and visual distracting elements. In Study 1a, learners watched a lesson with a high degree of distractions, in Study 1b learners watch a lesson with a moderate degree of distractions, and in Study 1c learners watched a lesson with a low degree of distractions. This set of studies found that as the degree of distraction increased, the correlation between executive function and posttest performance increased; there was no significant relationship at low levels of distraction but there was a significant relationship at moderate and high levels of distraction, suggesting that better executive function was related to better posttest performance only when a lesson was distracting. Working memory capacity was not significantly correlated with posttest performance in any version of thelesson. Experiment 2 further investigated this relationship to see if this finding would be extended into media with an increased possibility of distraction, specifically immersive virtual reality (IVR). In Experiment 2, learners watched a lesson presented via IVR or as a slideshow. This experiment found that, although there were no differences in learning between the two conditions, the relationship between executive function and posttest performance was only seen in the IVR lesson, not the slideshow lesson, such that learners with better executive function had better posttest scores when learning in the IVR lesson than learners with worse executive function. Once again, working memory capacity did not significant correlate with posttest performance. Lastly, Experiment 3 investigated whether the novelty of the IVR learning environment increased the distractibility of learning in IVR. Experiment 3 had learners either play a game in IVR prior to the lesson or had participants only watch the lesson. This experiment found that reducing the novelty of IVR for learners did not impact learning and so novelty may not be the reason for increased distractibility in IVR lessons. This series of experiments suggests that it is vital to think about the role that individual differences in learners’ skill at managing incoming information plays in learning, especially when using lessons with distracting information or distracting technology.

What is the effect on students' learning of converting a narrated slideshow with simple line drawings (original group) into one in which the key elements are rendered as colorful cartoon-like characters (cartoon group)? We conducted two between-subjects experiments in which the narrator's voice in both groups was a computer-generated female happy voice in Experiment 1 or a real female happy voice in Experiment 2. The cartoon group scored higher on a transfer posttest than the original group in both experiments. On subsequent questionnaires, the cartoon group reported feeling more positive (i.e., happy and content) during learning than the original group (in Experiment 1 and the combined experiments); and reported that the instructor was more engaging, better at facilitating learning, and more human-like (in Experiment 2 and the combined experiments). The results are consistent with the positivity principle, which predicts better learning from lessons in which key elements induce positive emotions.