Voice’s Effect on Student Effort Ratings and Recall Performance While Under Cognitive Stress

Abstract

Computer-generated speech is becoming more commonplace in classrooms, so it is important to examine the impact of computer voice on students’ cognition in a variety of learning situations. The current study investigated the effects of voice in a cognitively stressful, audio-only learning situation. In this experiment, 122 college students were recruited to listen to an audio lecture and respond to test questions. Our findings indicated that participants rated the classic voice engine as demanding the most effort and the human voice as demanding the least effort. Students also had the best recall performance in the human voice condition and the worst recall performance in the classic voice condition. Our results indicated that when learners are placed under cognitive stress, the human voice is the superior pedagogical agent. These results contribute to a growing body of research examining modern computer voice as a pedagogical agent.