The interactive effects of pedagogical agent role and voice emotion design on children’s learning

Students increasingly carry out learning activities in online learning spaces, but they suffer from the problem of insufficient teacher guidance and emotional support. Pedagogical agents are able to communicate with learners in different roles and interactions which to a certain extent can make up for the shortcomings of online learning spaces. To further enhance the teaching effectiveness of pedagogical agents, this study explored the effects of pedagogical agents’ role type and voice emotional design on learners’ learning outcomes (knowledge retention / transfer) and learning process (learning interest / academic emotion / cognitive load / intimacy / social presence / learning experience). Our study tested the interaction effects of two pedagogical agents’ images (teacher role/peer role) and two pedagogical agents’ voices (traditional synthesized voices/emotional synthesized voices) using a sample of 206 s grade students. The results show that the emotional design of voice does not have an obvious impact in relieving students’ emotional stress and improving their learning process and outcomes, however the interaction effect of peer role and voice emotional design does have clear advantages. The emotional design of voice may increase learners’ extrinsic cognitive load, therefore this design should try to minimize the extrinsic cognitive load, pay attention to guiding learners’ intrinsic cognitive load, and promote the related cognitive load. Meanwhile, in the design process of pedagogical agents, we should work to enhance intimacy and learning experience, rendering pleasurable emotions which will lessen learners’ anxiety and boredom through the emotional design of role types and voices. To conclude, the interaction effect of character and emotional voice has a practical application prospect only when utilized with the appropriate role type and reasonable voice emotionalization design.