The Effect of Emotional Congruency on Multimedia Learning: An Eye Movement Study

This study employed eye-tracking technology to examine the emotional congruency effect of multimedia learning. The emotional congruency refers to the congruency of emotional valence between learning material and the emotional design in multimedia learning. With the internal emotional design, conducted positive and negative emotional designs for both positive and negative learning materials, thereby manipulating the emotional congruency between the emotional valence of learning material and the emotional design. Experiment 1 adopted positive learning materials and Experiment 2 adopted negative learning materials. The results showed that the congruent condition exhibited superior learning outcomes and eye-tracking performance compared to the incongruent condition, no matter whether the learning materials were emotionally positive or negative, and provided empirical evidence for the Cognitive-Affective Theory of Multimedia Learning and the emotional congruency effect. However, this results pattern did not appear regarding subjective perception. The emotional congruency effect and its implications to educational practice were discussed.