The dissertation investigated the interplay between an elevated sense of purpose moderated by heightened altruistic motivation and sustained attention in a college undergraduate population. Drawing on existing literature highlighting the positive effects of purpose on well-being and cognitive abilities, the study introduced an experimental design…

In this evaluation study, we investigated the extent to which Solitaired.com's online game, Solitaire, could be used to model players' performance on several validated cognitive tests commonly associated with mental acuity (i.e., memory and processing speed). Prior research found that Solitaire gameplay is affected by mild cognitive impairment and…

The 21st century has seen a dramatic rise in experiential learning research and practice. After the previous century, where research on subjective experience was for the most part excluded from academic journals, there is today a resurgence of scholarly research on experience and experiential learning. Yet, how do we know when a given educational…

Few eye tracking studies have examined how people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) visually attend during live interpersonal interaction, and none with the Chinese population. This study used an eye tracker to record the gaze behavior in 20 Chinese children with ASD and 23 children with typical development (TD) when they were engaged in a…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a mindfulness-based intervention among college students with externalizing behaviors and attentional problems. Participants: Three students attending their first year in college received mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) intervention and data were collected…

Children on the autism spectrum often experience anxiety. Mindfulness is growing in popularity as a method to support children with anxiety; however, there is limited evidence on mindfulness for children on the autism spectrum. This study investigated the feasibility of a 10-week group-based mindfulness intervention for 14 children on the autism…

Textbooks currently include many elaborations that describe, illustrate, and explain main ideas, increasing the length of these textbook chapters. The current study investigated if the cost in additional reading time that these elaborations impose is outweighed by benefits to memory for main ideas. Given that elaborations in textbooks sometimes…

Engagement can be situative and, when it occurs, a number of experiences will co-occur. The present study examined the co-occurred experiences of optimal learning moments (OLM), a type of situated engagement, using the novel network analysis and including data from two countries: Finland and the US. Both samples were from high schools and were…

According to the MAA Instructional Practices Guide, deep learning requires student engagement with content both inside and outside the classroom. Hence, mathematics instructors must work to engage students in the learning experience. Higher education research often equates engaged learning and active learning, but what does engaged learning mean…

The present study uses a qualitative approach to focus on dance improvisation and flow. Dance instructors with wide experience in performing and teaching dance improvisation took part in semi-structured interviews that featured questions about dance improvisation and flow, including issues of flow in dance education with children. The data were…

Five types of affective supports were designed to induce an appropriate emotional regulation strategy in players of an educational video game. These supports were based on the emotional regulation strategies of situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. A series of qualitative…

Five types of affective supports were designed to induce an appropriate emotional regulation strategy in players of an educational video game. These supports were based on the emotional regulation strategies of situation selection,situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. A series of qualitative…

This study aims to examine the effects of physical variables (temperature, humidity, air quality, light, and sound) and those pertaining to the monitoring these physical variables on a group of students in terms of attention, motivation, attitudes, and perceptions of academic achievement (POA). The students were provided with a chance to monitor…

Using an integration of the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) model and the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). This study explored university students' motivation to learn through the use of gamification. A quantitative approach was used to obtain data from 60 students who participated in a gamified course utilizing a…

Students experience challenges when understanding visual information in multimedia learning. Specifically, immersive multimedia environments, such as virtual reality increase the likelihood that students undergo distractions in which information seeking during system-paced instruction occurred. Although previous studies have reviewed various cue…