Influence of Mood and Type of Learning on Ability to Learn
Understanding how we learn is essential to improving the quality of education each student receives. There are many factors that may help or hinder a student when they are trying to learn. The two that were focused on most prominently in this study were mood and the type of learning implemented. The two types of learning are intentional learning, which takes place when explicit instructions to learn and remember are given, and incidental learning, which takes place without explicit instructions to learn or remember. While in a classroom, students are mainly taught through intentional learning but incidental learning is just as important because it is how people learn about the world …show more content…
Participants included 105 college students (32 men, 73 women) ranging in age from 18 to 59 year’s old who were enrolled in a humanities course at an urban university at the time of the study. Participants rated their mood on the Wessman & Ricks’ Elation - Depression scale then were given 6 sentences (predetermined as either pleasant or unpleasant) to read for 30s each after which they were asked whether it was “pleasant” or “unpleasant.” After viewing all sentences participants were asked to write down as much of the sentences as they could recall and researchers measured how many of the 8 propositions in each sentence the participants remembered. Results showed that students in a positive mood were able to more clearly determine which sentences they found pleasant or unpleasant and remembered more material than students in a depressed mood. Hettena and Ballif (1981) stated that students in elated moods would be more likely to remember the material they were being taught in order to emphasize the importance of this study in developing appropriate teaching methods. However, the researchers only conducted a t test between the students who rated their mood as the most cheerful and the most …show more content…
This study differed from related research as it was the first to look at the role mood plays in two levels of processing, global and local. Global processing refers to paying attention to an image as a whole while local processing refers to focusing on the details of an image. Participants included 108 college students (56 men, 51 women, 1 participant who did not indicate their sex) in Experiment 1 and 69 college students (31 men, 38 women) in Experiment 2. All students received credit toward a course requirement for their participation, no age range was provided for either group. Participants in Experiment 1 were asked to write about either a positive memory or negative memory as a mood-induction procedure. Following this the participant was randomly assigned to one of 18 (happy or sad) drawing chains, and shown either the original drawing of an African shield (if they were the first participant in the chain) or the previous participant’s reproduction and studied it for 15s. After a delay they were asked to reproduce the drawing, then asked to rate aspects of their drawing from memory. Results of Experiment 1 showed that those in sadder moods did not focus on global information as much as happier participants and so the more reproductions that were made the more global
Understanding how we learn is essential to improving the quality of education each student receives. There are many factors that may help or hinder a student when they are trying to learn. The two that were focused on most prominently in this study were mood and the type of learning implemented. The two types of learning are intentional learning, which takes place when explicit instructions to learn and remember are given, and incidental learning, which takes place without explicit instructions to learn or remember. While in a classroom, students are mainly taught through intentional learning but incidental learning is just as important because it is how people learn about the world …show more content…
Participants included 105 college students (32 men, 73 women) ranging in age from 18 to 59 year’s old who were enrolled in a humanities course at an urban university at the time of the study. Participants rated their mood on the Wessman & Ricks’ Elation - Depression scale then were given 6 sentences (predetermined as either pleasant or unpleasant) to read for 30s each after which they were asked whether it was “pleasant” or “unpleasant.” After viewing all sentences participants were asked to write down as much of the sentences as they could recall and researchers measured how many of the 8 propositions in each sentence the participants remembered. Results showed that students in a positive mood were able to more clearly determine which sentences they found pleasant or unpleasant and remembered more material than students in a depressed mood. Hettena and Ballif (1981) stated that students in elated moods would be more likely to remember the material they were being taught in order to emphasize the importance of this study in developing appropriate teaching methods. However, the researchers only conducted a t test between the students who rated their mood as the most cheerful and the most …show more content…
This study differed from related research as it was the first to look at the role mood plays in two levels of processing, global and local. Global processing refers to paying attention to an image as a whole while local processing refers to focusing on the details of an image. Participants included 108 college students (56 men, 51 women, 1 participant who did not indicate their sex) in Experiment 1 and 69 college students (31 men, 38 women) in Experiment 2. All students received credit toward a course requirement for their participation, no age range was provided for either group. Participants in Experiment 1 were asked to write about either a positive memory or negative memory as a mood-induction procedure. Following this the participant was randomly assigned to one of 18 (happy or sad) drawing chains, and shown either the original drawing of an African shield (if they were the first participant in the chain) or the previous participant’s reproduction and studied it for 15s. After a delay they were asked to reproduce the drawing, then asked to rate aspects of their drawing from memory. Results of Experiment 1 showed that those in sadder moods did not focus on global information as much as happier participants and so the more reproductions that were made the more global