Language and Discourse Are Powerful Signals of Student Emotions during Tutoring | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

Language and Discourse Are Powerful Signals of Student Emotions during Tutoring

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Abstract:

We explored the possibility of predicting student emotions (boredom, flow/engagement, confusion, and frustration) by analyzing the text of student and tutor dialogues dur...Show More

Abstract:

We explored the possibility of predicting student emotions (boredom, flow/engagement, confusion, and frustration) by analyzing the text of student and tutor dialogues during interactions with an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) with conversational dialogues. After completing a learning session with the tutor, student emotions were judged by the students themselves (self-judgments), untrained peers, and trained judges. Transcripts from the tutorial dialogues were analyzed with four methods that included 1) identifying direct expressions of affect, 2) aligning the semantic content of student responses to affective terms, 3) identifying psychological and linguistic terms that are predictive of affect, and 4) assessing cohesion relationships that might reveal student affect. Models constructed by regressing the proportional occurrence of each emotion on textual features derived from these methods yielded large effects (R2 = 38%) for the psychological, linguistic, and cohesion-based methods, but not the direct expression and semantic alignment methods. We discuss the theoretical, methodological, and applied implications of our findings toward text-based emotion detection during tutoring.
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies ( Volume: 5, Issue: 4, Oct.-Dec. 2012)
Page(s): 304 - 317
Date of Publication: 24 April 2012

ISSN Information:

Author image of Sidney K. D'Mello
Departments of Computer Science and Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
Sidney K. D’Mello received the PhD degree in computer science from the University of Memphis in 2009. He is an assistant professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests include emotional processing, affective computing, artificial intelligence in education, human-computer interaction, speech recognition and natural language understanding, and computat...Show More
Sidney K. D’Mello received the PhD degree in computer science from the University of Memphis in 2009. He is an assistant professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests include emotional processing, affective computing, artificial intelligence in education, human-computer interaction, speech recognition and natural language understanding, and computat...View more
Author image of Art Graesser
Department of Psychology and the Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA
Arthur Graesser received the PhD degree in psychology from the University of California at San Diego. He is a professor of psychology, adjunct professor of computer science, and codirector of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. His specific interests include knowledge representation, question asking and answering, tutoring, text comprehension, inference generation, conversation, reading, ed...Show More
Arthur Graesser received the PhD degree in psychology from the University of California at San Diego. He is a professor of psychology, adjunct professor of computer science, and codirector of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. His specific interests include knowledge representation, question asking and answering, tutoring, text comprehension, inference generation, conversation, reading, ed...View more

Author image of Sidney K. D'Mello
Departments of Computer Science and Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
Sidney K. D’Mello received the PhD degree in computer science from the University of Memphis in 2009. He is an assistant professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests include emotional processing, affective computing, artificial intelligence in education, human-computer interaction, speech recognition and natural language understanding, and computational models of human cognition. He has published more than 100 journal papers, book chapters, and conference proceedings in these areas. He has edited two books on affective computing. He is an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing and serves as an advisory editor for the Journal of Educational Psychology.
Sidney K. D’Mello received the PhD degree in computer science from the University of Memphis in 2009. He is an assistant professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests include emotional processing, affective computing, artificial intelligence in education, human-computer interaction, speech recognition and natural language understanding, and computational models of human cognition. He has published more than 100 journal papers, book chapters, and conference proceedings in these areas. He has edited two books on affective computing. He is an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing and serves as an advisory editor for the Journal of Educational Psychology.View more
Author image of Art Graesser
Department of Psychology and the Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA
Arthur Graesser received the PhD degree in psychology from the University of California at San Diego. He is a professor of psychology, adjunct professor of computer science, and codirector of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. His specific interests include knowledge representation, question asking and answering, tutoring, text comprehension, inference generation, conversation, reading, education, memory, expert systems, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. Currently, he is the editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology. In addition to publishing more than 400 articles in journals, books, and conference proceedings, he has written two books and edited nine books.
Arthur Graesser received the PhD degree in psychology from the University of California at San Diego. He is a professor of psychology, adjunct professor of computer science, and codirector of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. His specific interests include knowledge representation, question asking and answering, tutoring, text comprehension, inference generation, conversation, reading, education, memory, expert systems, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. Currently, he is the editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology. In addition to publishing more than 400 articles in journals, books, and conference proceedings, he has written two books and edited nine books.View more

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