The Power of Voice to Convey Emotion in Multimedia Instructional Messages

Abstract This study examines an aspect of the role emotion in multimedia learning, i.e., whether participants can recognize instructor’s positive or negative based on hearing short clips involving only voice just as well also seeing embodied onscreen agent. Participants viewed 16 video from a statistics lecture which animated instructor, conveying happy, content, frustrated, bored emotion, stands next to slide she lectures (agent present) uses her absent). For each clip, rated instructor five-point scales for how and seemed. First, instructors, were accurate rating emotional tone with plus supports hypothesis , posits that is powerful source social-emotional information. Second, happy content instructors higher frustrated scales. positivity people are particularly sensitive instructional messages.