Task Engagement Research Articles

The Effects of Effort Feedback and L2 Task Attributions on Task Engagement and Performance

Despite their well-established connections to student motivation and to learning outcomes, attributions, particularly at the task-level, have not garnered much attention in L2 learning research. However, research evidence in educational psychology (e.g., Stajkovic & Sommer, 2000) suggests that L2 task attributions may affect subsequent task engagement and performance. L2 task engagement is a construct studied extensively in recent L2 learning research because of its association with high-quality task performance and learning outcomes. The primary objective of this work-in-progress study is to clarify this potential link between L2 task attributions, engagement, and performance. In addition, the effect of effort feedback on these three constructs is also investigated. Previous research (e.g., Amemiya & Wang, 2018) has documented that effort feedback typically used with good intentions by L2 teachers may, in fact, backfire and exert negative influences on how individuals shape task attributions, which in turn lead to poor-quality task engagement and performance. A within-group quasi-experimental research design will be adopted for these purposes, and 120 Japanese high school students will be recruited. Participants will be divided into two groups to counterbalance the order of effort feedback provision. Three reading tasks from the EIKEN Test in Practical English Proficiency, Grade Pre-2, will be used, and time on task will be recorded as an indicator of task engagement. After performing the tasks, the participants will receive effort feedback and report their task attributions. The relationship between effort feedback, task attributions, engagement, and performance will be analyzed through hierarchical multiple regression analyses.

Resting state electroencephalographic rhythms are affected by immediately preceding memory demands in cognitively unimpaired elderly and patients with mild cognitive impairment.

Experiments on event-related electroencephalographic oscillations in aged people typically include blocks of cognitive tasks with a few minutes of interval between them. The present exploratory study tested the effect of being engaged on cognitive tasks over the resting state cortical arousal after task completion, and whether it differs according to the level of the participant's cognitive decline. To investigate this issue, we used a local database including data in 30 healthy cognitively unimpaired (CU) persons and 40 matched patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). They had been involved in 2 memory tasks for about 40 min and underwent resting-state electroencephalographic (rsEEG) recording after 5 min from the task end. eLORETA freeware estimated rsEEG alpha source activity as an index of general cortical arousal. In the CU but not aMCI group, there was a negative correlation between memory tasks performance and posterior rsEEG alpha source activity. The better the memory tasks performance, the lower the posterior alpha activity (i.e., higher cortical arousal). There was also a negative correlation between neuropsychological test scores of global cognitive status and alpha source activity. These results suggest that engagement in memory tasks may perturb background brain arousal for more than 5 min after the tasks end, and that this effect are dependent on participants global cognitive status. Future studies in CU and aMCI groups may cross-validate and extend these results with experiments including (1) rsEEG recordings before memory tasks and (2) post-tasks rsEEG recordings after 5, 15, and 30 min.

Preschoolers’ Vocabulary Skills And Inhibitory Control: The Role Of Classroom Engagement

ABSTRACT Research Findings: Preschoolers’ vocabulary skills and inhibitory control have been demonstrated critical for later school success; however, the ways in which the individual classroom experiences dynamically interchange with these skills is still unclear. In this paper, we examine the role of children’s individual engagement with teachers, peers, and tasks in facilitating children’s skill development across the school year. Using a sample of 895 preschoolers across 223 classrooms drawn from the Professional Development Study, the current study examined engagement as both outcomes of children’s vocabulary and inhibitory control in the fall of the preschool year and as mediators of linkages between them across the preschool year. Results suggested that vocabulary skills and inhibitory control each shape different aspects of classroom engagement. Children’s vocabulary was associated with positive engagement with teachers and peers, whereas inhibitory control was associated with positive task engagement and negative engagement. We also found that negative engagement as composited by conflicts with teachers and peers and off-task behaviors mediated the association between fall inhibitory control with spring vocabulary and inhibitory control. Practice or Policy: Together, these findings suggest the critical role of individual classroom experiences in explaining children’s vocabulary and inhibitory control development.

Educating and engaging a new target audience about the problem of pain for society.

Background: Pain education initiatives are typically targeted at health professionals, with less attention being placed on the education of other target audiences. Recent curriculum changes across undergraduate liberal studies degree programs at The University of Sydney presented an opportunity to develop an online course entitled Health Challenges: Pain and Society, which was aimed at a non-traditional target audience. To promote student engagement about the problem of pain for society, the course was designed using the Community of Inquiry framework. Research Design: This paper reports on an Educational Design Research study, investigating the effectiveness of the course in engaging students across two cohorts, in 2019 and 2020. Data Collection: Learning analytics were collected from the Learning Management System each year. The level of student engagement in non-assessable tasks was measured using multiple linear regression. Students' degree type and majors were recorded. In 2020, the quality of student workbook responses was recorded. Results: In both cohorts, engagement with the workbooks was a predictor of academic achievement. In 2020, a significant interaction effect between quantity and quality of engagement was observed. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of designing online learning to facilitate successful engagement for non-traditional target audiences about the issue of chronic pain for society.

Better to Be Optimistic, Mindful, or Both? Interaction between Optimism, Mindfulness, & Engagement

This paper investigates the relationships between optimism, mindfulness, and task engagement. Specifically, we hypothesized that optimism, mindfulness, and their interaction would facilitate individuals’ task engagement. We tested our research model in four studies: two surveys among gig workers and two experiments. The results of the two surveys among gig workers indicated that optimism predicted higher task engagement, but trait mindfulness did not, and that a multiplicative interaction existed between high optimism and high mindfulness in stimulating task engagement. Our two experiments confirmed a significant interaction between optimism and induced state mindfulness and showed that the most engaging situation is being high in both mindfulness and optimism. Although optimism predicted task engagement, the experiments indicated the effect of the state mindfulness manipulation was above and beyond that of optimism. Finally, we discuss the nuances of the interaction between optimism and mindfulness in predicting task engagement.

State Epistemic Curiosity in Organizations

Despite decades of research, epistemic curiosity and its consequences remain misunderstood. In a series of three studies, we develop a measure of state curiosity and explore the role it plays in organizations. We argue that curious states are proximal predictors to several relevant workplace outcomes. Specifically, we look at how state curiosity influences worker adjustment, including affect and task engagement, as well as worker behavior, including information elaboration, learning behaviors, resilience, and turnover intentions. In order to better understand these relationships, we investigate two types of state curiosity: interest and deprivation. We examine these dimensions in Study 1, demonstrating initial validation evidence of a new state measure of curiosity. In Study 2, we replicate our validation of our new measure, doing so using experience sampling methodology (ESM). Further, Study 2 finds these two states to be differentially related to positive and negative affect, job satisfaction, and task engagement. Finally, in Study 3 we expand these ideas in a panel investigation. For this study, we further examined the impact of the two dimensions of state curiosity on workplace outcomes, including task engagement, affect, information elaboration, learning behaviors, resilience, and turnover intentions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Music and dance enhance social interaction and task engagement in autistic young pupils and their peers in mainstream schools

A growing number of autistic pupils attend mainstream schools which raises questions around their educational and social inclusion. The current study explored the benefits of participating in a novel music and dance programme for autistic children and their peers, aged 5–8 years. It sought to discover whether music and dance tasks can be memorable and motivating, thus promoting active engagement and social inclusion among the pupils. A total of 42 pupils (seven autistic), in seven groups, took part in the 6‐week programme. Repetition of task and pre and post observation checklists, completed by the class teachers, were used. Video observation facilitated the collection of data and analysis of the repetition of task. Music was found to be a positive cue for pupils to remember and perform the tasks, thus enhancing their engagement and inclusion in the group. The activities also offered opportunities for interaction, promoting co‐operation and inclusion.

What To Do First? A Demand-ability Fit Perspective on Task Motivation and Carryover Effects

In the course of a workday, employees attend to a variety of distinct tasks. Considering that motivation may vary from one task to the next on a daily basis, our understanding of motivation at work is incomplete without understanding (1) how demand-ability fit affects motivation at the task, instead of job, level and (2) how motivation on previous tasks carries over into subsequent tasks. Drawing on research in task complexity and situational motivation theories, we develop a theoretical model that examines the moderating effects of intrinsic motivation on a previous task on the relationship between characteristics of a later task and task intrinsic motivation, which in turn influence task performance and task engagement for the later task, and end-of-day recovery. We find that when previous levels of task motivation are higher, the positive effects of congruence between task complexity demand and ability on later task motivation will be stronger (i.e., carryover effect); nevertheless, the negative effects of any incongruence between task complexity demand and ability on later task motivation will also be stronger (i.e., contrast effect). In addition, intrinsic motivation for the later task is positively associated with task performance, task engagement, and recovery. The implications for theory and research on dynamic motivation and task transitions are discussed.

Struck or Protected by Career Shocks During the Pandemic?: A Dualistic Passion Perspective

Negative career shocks spark sensemaking and can provoke feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals have faced such jarring work events; however, we need a better understanding of how different individuals may have been emotionally affected by these changes. We extend the dualistic theory of passion to explain these responses. We suggest that obsessive passion (OP) creates a rigid engagement with work activities in which work consumes one’s identity and conflicts with other important activities, creating a sense of hopelessness. Under fear of job loss and workload reduction during covid, the effect of OP on hopelessness intensifies. In comparison, harmonious passion (HP) creates flexible task engagement in which work becomes a balanced part of one’s identity and supports basic needs of autonomy, competence, relatedness, supporting a more positive outlook. Under fear of job loss, but not workload reduction, HP provides an even greater buffer against hopelessness. Our application of the dualistic model of passion and results has important implications for theory, practice, and future research.

The roles of motivation and engagement in computer-based assessment of children's reading comprehension

The present study investigates whether task engagement mediates the effects of reading-related self-efficacy and motivation on reading comprehension. Finnish-speaking students from Grades 3 and 4 performed a computer-based reading comprehension task. Engagement was measured by two indicators retrieved from log files: time-on-task (behavioral engagement) and response strategy (cognitive engagement). Two studies were conducted. Study 1 included mostly fluent readers (N = 108), and Study 2, which served as a conceptual replication of Study 1, included both fluent and dysfluent readers (N = 308). The results of both studies suggest that cognitive engagement mediates the effect of reading enjoyment on reading comprehension. In Study 2, the effect of self-efficacy on reading comprehension was mediated by both types of engagement but only when the effect of reading enjoyment was not controlled for. Overall, the results provide further clarification of the mechanism by which motivation affects children's task-oriented reading.

A decrease in physiological arousal accompanied by stable behavioral performance reflects task habituation.

Despite the evidence of a positive relationship between task demands and listening effort, the Framework for Understanding Effortful Listening (FUEL) highlights the important role of arousal on an individual’s choice to engage in challenging listening tasks. Previous studies have interpreted physiological responses in conjunction with behavioral responses as markers of task engagement. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of potential changes in physiological arousal, indexed by the pupil baseline, on task engagement over the course of an auditory recall test. Furthermore, the aim was to investigate whether working memory (WM) capacity and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at which the test was conducted had an effect on changes in arousal. Twenty-one adult hearing aid users with mild to moderately severe symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss were included. The pupil baseline was measured during the Sentence-final Word Identification and Recall (SWIR) test, which was administered in a background noise composed of sixteen talkers. The Reading Span (RS) test was used as a measure of WM capacity. The findings showed that the pupil baseline decreased over the course of the SWIR test. However, recall performance remained stable, indicating that the participants maintained the necessary engagement level required to perform the task. These findings were interpreted as a decline in arousal as a result of task habituation. There was no effect of WM capacity or individual SNR level on the change in pupil baseline over time. A significant interaction was found between WM capacity and SNR level on the overall mean pupil baseline. Individuals with higher WM capacity exhibited an overall larger mean pupil baseline at low SNR levels compared to individuals with poorer WM capacity. This may be related to the ability of individuals with higher WM capacity to perform better than individual with poorer WM capacity in challenging listening conditions.

Task Context Modulates Feature-Selective Responses in Area V4.

Feature selectivity of visual cortical responses measured during passive fixation provides only a partial view of selectivity because it does not account for the influence of cognitive factors. Here we focus on primate area V4 and ask how neuronal tuning is modulated by task engagement. We investigated whether responses to colored shapes during active shape discrimination are simple, stimulus-agnostic, scaled versions of responses during passive fixation, akin to results from attentional studies. Alternatively, responses could be subject to stimulus-specific scaling, that is, responses to different stimuli are modulated differently, resulting in changes in underlying shape/color selectivity. Among 83 well-isolated V4 neurons in two male macaques, only a minority (16 of 83), which were weakly tuned to both shape and color, displayed responses during fixation and discrimination tasks that could be related by stimulus-agnostic scaling. The majority (67 of 83), which were strongly tuned to shape, color, or both, displayed stimulus-dependent response changes during discrimination. For some of these neurons (39 of 83), the shape or color of the stimulus dictated the magnitude of the change, and for others (28 of 83) it was the combination of stimulus shape and color. Importantly, for neurons with one strong and one weak tuning dimension, stimulus-dependent response changes during discrimination were associated with a relative increase in selectivity along the stronger tuning dimension, without changes in tuning peak. These results reveal that more strongly tuned V4 neurons may also be more flexible in their selectivity, and imbalances in selectivity are amplified during active task contexts.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Tuning for stimulus features is typically characterized by recording responses during passive fixation, but cognitive factors, including attention, influence responses in visual cortex. To determine how behavioral engagement influences neuronal responses in area V4, we compared responses to colored shapes during passive fixation and active behavior. For a large fraction of neurons, differences in responses between passive fixation and active behavior depended on the identity of the visual stimulus. For a subgroup of strongly feature-selective neurons, this response modulation was associated with enhanced selectivity for one feature at the expense of selectivity for the other. Such flexibility in tuning strength could improve performance in tasks requiring active judgment of stimuli.

The impact of multiple gender dimensions on health-related quality of life in persons with Parkinson’s disease: an exploratory study

BackgroundThere is a growing recognition that sex characteristics and gender-related aspects can have a substantial impact on the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of persons with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Gender is a multidimensional construct, including dynamic social norms and relations that influence health and impact quality of life. Even when gender is investigated in the field of PD, it is frequently conceptualized as gender identity while other dimensions, such as roles or relations, are generally ignored. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of several gender dimensions on HRQoL among people with PD.MethodsWe performed a survey-based, cross-sectional study in the Netherlands to explore the impact of several gender dimensions, namely; gender identity, gender roles and gender relations on HRQoL (PDQ-39) of people with PD.ResultsIn our study population (N = 307), including 127 (41%) women, we did not observe an association between gender identity and overall HRQoL. In contrast, an androgynous gender role and higher engagement in household tasks were associated with better overall HRQoL among people with PD.ConclusionsThis study offers the first detailed description of the impact of different gender dimensions on the HRQoL of people with PD and highlights the need for more precise gender-measures to inform actionable gender-sensitive health interventions for people with PD.

I'll Do It - After One More Scroll: The Effects of Boredom Proneness, Self-Control, and Impulsivity on Online Procrastination.

Procrastination is a common phenomenon. With the increasing ubiquity of new media, research has started to investigate the ways in which these technologies are used as alternatives to task engagement. This paper extends the literature by examining procrastinatory uses of social media, instant messaging, and online shopping with respect to boredom proneness, self-control, and impulsivity among German and Turkish samples. Regression analyses revealed that boredom proneness, self-control, and the perseverance facet of impulsivity are especially significant predictors of online procrastination in both samples. The results between the two studies differ in terms of impulsivity. The findings of this paper highlight the thus far understudied role of boredom proneness and various aspects of impulsivity in online procrastination, and demonstrate that social media procrastination, instant messaging procrastination, and shopping procrastination tendencies likely have distinct underlying mechanisms.

Production of oral narratives with an app in Early Childhood Education: analysis of engagement and narrative competence

The digital storytelling applications are being implemented in schools to favor the acquisition of multiple learnings. This research analyses the narrative competence of Early Childhood Education students (N=93), based on their oral stories -created with the support of a digital storytelling app- and their engagement in the narrative task. Moreover, the contribution of the application to the development of narrative competence is analyzed, considering its immersive capacity and the potential to foster self-regulation of learning. A mixed methodology is adopted: a) qualitative, focused on the content analysis of the stories, paying attention to the indicators defining the variables narrative competence and engagement and b) quantitative, centered on the statistical treatment of the data, median contrast, and correlational analysis between variables. Thus, it is verified that hardly half of the students present a medium-high narrative competence and the 73% has a medium-high engagement. There is a significant correlation between both variables, which highlights the capacity of the app to favor self-regulation and motivation towards narrative task, and to promote the skills to create a coherent, original, and well-structured story, which confirms its high educational potential.

Hypothalamic Control of Forelimb Motor Adaptation.

The ability to perform skilled arm movements is central to everyday life, as limb impairments in common neurologic disorders such as stroke demonstrate. Skilled arm movements require adaptation of motor commands based on discrepancies between desired and actual movements, called sensory errors. Studies in humans show that this involves predictive and reactive movement adaptations to the errors, and also requires a general motivation to move. How these distinct aspects map onto defined neural signals remains unclear, because of a shortage of equivalent studies in experimental animal models that permit neural-level insights. Therefore, we adapted robotic technology used in human studies to mice, enabling insights into the neural underpinnings of motivational, reactive, and predictive aspects of motor adaptation. Here, we show that forelimb motor adaptation is regulated by neurons previously implicated in motivation and arousal, but not in forelimb motor control: the hypothalamic orexin/hypocretin neurons (HONs). By studying goal-oriented mouse-robot interactions in male mice, we found distinct HON signals occur during forelimb movements and motor adaptation. Temporally-delimited optosilencing of these movement-associated HON signals impaired sensory error-based motor adaptation. Unexpectedly, optosilencing affected neither task reward or execution rates, nor motor performance in tasks that did not require adaptation, indicating that the temporally-defined HON signals studied here were distinct from signals governing general task engagement or sensorimotor control. Collectively, these results reveal a hypothalamic neural substrate regulating forelimb motor adaptation.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The ability to perform skilled, adaptable movements is a fundamental part of daily life, and is impaired in common neurologic diseases such as stroke. Maintaining motor adaptation is thus of great interest, but the necessary brain components remain incompletely identified. We found that impaired motor adaptation results from disruption of cells not previously implicated in this pathology: hypothalamic orexin/hypocretin neurons (HONs). We show that temporally confined HON signals are associated with skilled movements. Without these newly-identified signals, a resistance to movement that is normally rapidly overcome leads to prolonged movement impairment. These results identify natural brain signals that enable rapid and effective motor adaptation.

Implementing continuous assessment in an academic English writing course: An exploratory study

Although continuous assessment is often used in different disciplines, its implementation in L2 writing is underexplored. Adopting the framework of learning-oriented assessment (Carless, 2015) and the concept of affordances (Gibson, 1986), this exploratory study examined a case study of how one teacher and her students perceived and shaped/utilized the motivational and learning affordances of regular low-stakes continuous assessment in a tertiary academic English writing course. Data were collected from classroom observation, teacher and student interviews, student writing, and pre- and post-course surveys. The findings revealed a complex picture of the differing degrees to which the teacher harmonized the AoL and AfL aspects of CA across the three dimensions of learning-oriented assessment based on the various ways she perceived and shaped its classroom affordances. The students’ perceptions and utilization of the learning affordances of CA largely converged with those that were perceived and shaped by the teacher. However, difference was found in how the motivational affordances of CA were perceived and shaped/utilized. A model of learning-oriented continuous assessment in L2 writing is proposed and pedagogical implications are discussed. • Teacher showed differing extents of perceiving and creating affordances for CA. • Teacher views of affordances for CA largely converged with student views. • Students perceived more affordances regarding CA task engagement than teacher.

Could directly shifting self-doubt mind-set reduce the negative effects of chronic self-doubt?

ABSTRACT Research has shown negative effects of chronic self-doubt on psychological and performance outcomes. Two experiments were conducted to examine (a) the malleability of the mind-set about self-doubt; and (b) whether shifting to a more positive mind-set reduces the negative effects of self-doubt. Participants in Experiment 1 were randomly assigned to one of two mind-set induction conditions (positive versus negative). A control group was added in Experiment 2, in which we also enhanced the strength and symmetry of the positive and negative mind-set inductions. The results from both experiments showed a significant change in self-doubt mind-set in the hypothesized direction as a result of the mind-set induction. Interestingly, Experiment 2 revealed that priming either positive or negative mind-set diminished the negative self-doubt effects on task engagement, relative to the control group. The findings for the negative mind-set group were counter to the hypothesis but replicated what was observed in Experiment 1.

Educational Robotics Intervention to Foster Computational Thinking in Preschoolers: Effects of Children's Task Engagement.

Computational thinking (CT) is a broadly used term in education to refer to the cognitive processes underlying the application of computer science concepts and strategies of problem-solving. Recent literature has pointed out the value of children acquiring computational thinking skills (i.e., understanding and applying concepts, such as conditionals, iteration, or generalization), especially while learning STEM subjects. Robotics has been used as a tool to introduce computational thinking and STEM knowledge to children. As physical objects, robots have been proposed as developmentally appropriate for the early childhood setting, promoting motivation and allowing young learners to represent abstract ideas in a concrete setting. This study presents a novel educational robotics (ER) intervention using RoboTito, a robot programmable through tangible elements in its environment designed for kindergarteners. We used a quasi-experimental design with an active control group. In addition, we conducted a structured observation of the filmed material of the sessions to gather data on children’s attention and motivation throughout the activities. Fifty-one children (male = 33; mean age = 66 months, SD = 5.49 months) attending level 5 (kindergarten) at a Uruguayan public school participated in the study. Children in our experimental condition participated in an intervention programming RoboTito using tangible elements, while children in our control condition played with the robot through sensory-motor activities using a remote control and did not engage in programming. Motivational and attentional factors were assessed through video-recorded sessions of the ER activities. Four trained observers blind to the experimental conditions participated in the coding. Children’s interactions were assessed in four categories: task engagement, distractibility, oral participation, and objective fulfillment. Our results suggest children’s task engagement mediated their gains in CT after the intervention; post-hoc Tukey contrasts revealed non-significant pre-test to post-test gains for the control and low engagement groups, and significant for the high engagement group. Overall, we conclude task engagement played a central role in children’s learning gains and our robotics intervention was successful in promoting CT for engaged children. We discuss the practical implications of our results for early childhood education and developmentally appropriate ER targeted for young learners.

Promoting Social Engagement With a Multi-Role Dancing Robot for In-Home Autism Care.

This work describes the design of real-time dance-based interaction with a humanoid robot, where the robot seeks to promote physical activity in children by taking on multiple roles as a dance partner. It acts as a leader by initiating dances but can also act as a follower by mimicking a child’s dance movements. Dances in the leader role are produced by a sequence-to-sequence (S2S) Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network trained on children’s music videos taken from YouTube. On the other hand, a music orchestration platform is implemented to generate background music in the follower mode as the robot mimics the child’s poses. In doing so, we also incorporated the largely unexplored paradigm of learning-by-teaching by including multiple robot roles that allow the child to both learn from and teach to the robot. Our work is among the first to implement a largely autonomous, real-time full-body dance interaction with a bipedal humanoid robot that also explores the impact of the robot roles on child engagement. Importantly, we also incorporated in our design formal constructs taken from autism therapy, such as the least-to-most prompting hierarchy, reinforcements for positive behaviors, and a time delay to make behavioral observations. We implemented a multimodal child engagement model that encompasses both affective engagement (displayed through eye gaze focus and facial expressions) as well as task engagement (determined by the level of physical activity) to determine child engagement states. We then conducted a virtual exploratory user study to evaluate the impact of mixed robot roles on user engagement and found no statistically significant difference in the children’s engagement in single-role and multiple-role interactions. While the children were observed to respond positively to both robot behaviors, they preferred the music-driven leader role over the movement-driven follower role, a result that can partly be attributed to the virtual nature of the study. Our findings support the utility of such a platform in practicing physical activity but indicate that further research is necessary to fully explore the impact of each robot role.