This design case describes the development and iterative refinement of an instructional method for teaching the Spanish prepositions por and para, which are a persistent challenge for learners to master, even at advanced levels. This instructional design is a visually based mnemonic system that uses color-coded images to facilitate the memorization and contextual understanding of 14 distinct usage rules. Initially created from classroom necessity and refined over multiple semesters, the design combines visual aids, student interaction, and a novel “color reveal” step that retroactively assigns color categories—black-and-white for por and color for para—to previously memorized images. This delayed categorization allows learners to chunk and sort abstract grammar rules efficiently, reducing cognitive load and improving retention. The method was implemented in second-semester Spanish courses at a large Midwestern university and later adapted for asynchronous instruction. Only after developing the design did the theoretical underpinnings—dual coding, information processing theory, and schema formation—become clear. This case illustrates to the designer the value of practice-driven innovation and the role of cognitive theory in shaping effective instructional tools.
As AI virtual influencers (AIVIs) proliferate, understanding human-AI emotional engagement is vital for advancing affective computing. To examine whether AIVIs evoke comparable affective responses to human influencers (HIs), we analyzed 156,918 Instagram comments that received 12+ million likes, integratinglarge language model (LLM)-derived knowledge graphs, emotion analysis, and machine learning. HI-directed discourse shows more differentiated emotional expression and a pattern consistent with more cohesive semantic networks than AIVI-directed discourse. AIVI-directed comments are less likely to express positive affect (24.8% vs. 41.5%) and also less likely to express negative affect (5.8% vs. 9.3%), indicating reduced affective expression of either valence rather than heightened negativity. This group-level tendency is not uniform: affective engagement varies substantially across AIVIs, and that variation is more closely associated with positive than with negative expression. Our Multi-Signal Embedding Network (MSEN), incorporating behavioral metrics and OpenAI semantic embeddings, classified influencer types from behavioral, affective and semantic features (F1 = 0.89), outperforming baselines including a state-of-the-art zero-shot LLM. These findings identify a boundary condition for the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm: human-like appearance can elicit social responses without producing affective and semantic response patterns as rich as those elicited by HIs.
Purpose Academic procrastination (AP) is a pervasive self-regulatory problem that undermines students’ academic functioning and psychological well-being. This study examined the direct and indirect relationships between growth and fixed mindsets, internal and external locus of control, and AP in sports science students. Method Internal and external locus of control were tested as parallel mediators in separate growth and fixed mindset models. A cross-sectional predictive design was employed with 544 undergraduate sports science students in Eastern Anatolia, Türkiye. Participants completed measures of mindset, locus of control, and AP. Parallel mediation analyses were conducted using PROCESS Macro (Model 4) with 5,000 bootstrap samples, controlling for age and gender. Results The direct effects indicated that a growth mindset was negatively associated with AP, whereas a fixed mindset was positively associated with AP. A growth mindset was positively associated with an internal locus of control and negatively associated with an external locus of control, whereas a fixed mindset was negatively associated with an internal locus of control and positively associated with an external locus of control. An external locus of control was positively associated with AP and significantly mediated the relationships between both mindset dimensions and AP. In contrast, the internal locus of control did not significantly mediate either relationship. Male students reported higher AP levels than female students, and age was negatively associated with AP. Conclusion These findings suggest that an external locus of control is a key behavioral mechanism linking mindset beliefs to AP. Interventions targeting maladaptive external control beliefs may help reduce AP among sports science students.
Background: Spouses of persons with psychosis carry a distinct caregiving burden, but Indian studies often group them with other relatives. The study aims to assess anxiety and stress among spouses of persons with psychosis, examine their association with coping and family functioning, and explore differences by gender and marriage duration. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional analytical study, 80 spouses (32 men, 48 women) were recruited by purposive sampling at a tertiary psychiatric hospital in Goa. Anxiety and stress were measured with DASS-21 subscales, family functioning with the General Functioning subscale of the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD-GF), and coping with a 10-item researcher-constructed questionnaire. Results: Severe or extremely severe anxiety was reported by 95.0% of spouses, while 86.3% had moderate stress. Anxiety (ρ = 0.31, p = 0.005) and stress (ρ = 0.42, p < 0.001) were positively correlated with FAD-GF scores, indicating poorer family functioning with greater psychological distress. Coping scores were negatively correlated with anxiety (ρ = −0.27, p = 0.015) and FAD-GF scores (ρ = −0.30, p = 0.007), indicating that lower coping scores, defined as more frequent and effective coping, were unexpectedly associated with greater anxiety and poorer family functioning. The correlation between coping and stress was not statistically significant (ρ = −0.21, p = 0.062). Women reported higher anxiety than men (p = 0.047). Family functioning differed across marriage-duration groups (p = 0.036), although no pairwise differences remained significant after Bonferroni correction. Conclusion: Severe anxiety was very common among spouses and was associated with poorer family functioning. Because the design is cross-sectional, the sample is small and from one centre, and the coping scale is not validated, the findings show association only. Routine assessment of spouses and family-focused support are indicated. Keywords: Spouses; psychosis; anxiety; stress; coping; family functioning
Vocabulary acquisition constitutes a fundamental component in learning English as a foreign language; however, traditional teaching methods do not always promote motivation or long-term lexical retention. In this context, the present study aimed to analyze the effectiveness of storytelling with urban legends in teaching vocabulary to young English learners. The re-search was developed under a quantitative approach and a quasi-experimental pretest and posttest design with a single group. The sample consisted of 48 students from the National and Foreign Languages Pedagogy major at the Technical University of Cotopaxi, and for data collection, a 30-item multiple-choice vocabulary test was used, which was applied before and after a pedagogical intervention based on four storytelling sessions using urban legends, de-signed for this research and validated through the judgment of three expert professors from the National and Foreign Languages Pedagogy major. The data were analyzed using descrip-tive statistics in Microsoft Excel, and the results showed an increase in the mean scores, which went from 20.27 in the pretest to 24.94 in the posttest; likewise, the minimum score increased from 5 to 11 points and the standard deviation decreased from 5.79 to 5.03, evi-dencing a more homogeneous performance after the intervention. In conclusion, the findings suggest that storytelling with urban legends constitutes a pertinent pedagogical strategy to strengthen English vocabulary learning by providing meaningful narrative contexts that favor the comprehension, retention, and use of new words.
With the World Health Organization (WHO) estimating 720,000 deaths from suicide each year, the phenomenon of suicide is a priority in public health policy. International policy frameworks highlight the need to adopt biopsychosocial perspectives in order to understand the phenomenon of suicide; however, in practice, it is noted that social components play a minor role in policy design, with a preference for a biopsychological and clinical approach. This paper seeks to answer the question: Does Spanish public policy on suicide prevention operationalize the biopsychosocial model of suicide in its strategic implementation? To answer this question, a documentary analysis of public policies is carried out using the READ method. Current suicide policies in force in Spain are examined at three levels: transnational framework documents, national policies, and regional public policies. In the 15 policies analyzed, a lexicometric analysis is combined with a thematic qualitative policy analysis. The results show that, as one moves down to policies closer to the population, a gap emerges between the discursive use of the biopsychosocial model and its practical application. It is concluded that at the transnational and national policy levels, the biopsychosocial model predominates in the understanding of suicide, while in Spain’s autonomous communities, the psychobiological approach tends to be prioritized over social causes. This has an impact on the types of measures proposed, which have limited intersectional scope, a narrow view of the community-based approach, and prioritize healthcare resources to address the phenomenon of suicide.
Ageism is a widespread but often overlooked form of discrimination that can manifest both positively and negatively in healthcare. In clinical practice, discriminatory attitudes towards older adult can impact the quality and equality of medical care. Empathy plays a crucial role in mitigating such biases among physicians. This study aimed to evaluate the attitudes of family physicians toward age discrimination and to assess the relationship between these attitudes and physicians’ empathy levels, along with the influence of various sociodemographic factors. A descriptive, cross-sectional survey was conducted between May and August 2021 among family physicians, residents, and specialists working in Samsun, Turkey. Data were collected via online, phone, or face-to-face surveys using the Attitude Scale of Age Discrimination (ASAD) and the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy – Health Professional version (JSPE-HP). A total of 299 physicians participated. Participants exhibited high levels of empathy (mean JSPE: 81.6±9.49) and generally positive attitudes toward older adults (mean ASAD: 88.19±8.65). Age, gender, and professional experience significantly influenced both empathy and ageism scores. Older, female, and more experienced physicians showed more empathetic and less ageist attitudes. A statistically significant, low-level positive correlation was found between empathy and positive attitudes toward older adults.
Purpose To investigate the longitudinal relationship between university students’ subjective exercise experiences and their physical exercise behavior using a cross-lagged research design, and to analyze the moderating role of motivational beliefs in this relationship. Methods A one-year, two-stage longitudinal questionnaire survey was conducted among 422 university students in Jiangxi Province (52.6% male, mean age = 18.29 ± 0.632 years) using the Subjective Exercise Experience Scale, the Adolescent Physical Activity Scale, the Exercise Self-Efficacy Scale and the Perceived Value of Exercise Scale. Results (1) Gender differences were observed in both subjective exercise experience and physical exercise behavior across the two phases; male participants scored higher on average than female participants across all measures. (2) There was a significant positive correlation between subjective exercise experience and physical exercise behavior among university students. (3) Results from a cross-lagged model controlling for gender indicated that subjective exercise experience at T1 significantly and positively predicted physical exercise behavior at T2 ( β = 0.385, p < 0.001), and physical exercise behavior at T1 significantly and positively predicted subjective exercise experience at T2 ( β = 0.336, p < 0.001). (4) Motivational beliefs exerted a significant positive moderating effect on both cross-lagged pathways. Conclusion Gender differences exist in both subjective exercise experience and physical exercise behavior among university students; there is a longitudinal relationship across time between subjective exercise experience and physical exercise behavior; and motivational beliefs exert a significant moderating effect on the prospective predictive pathways between subjective exercise experience and physical exercise behavior.
Aims and background: The sleep-wake cycle and sleep consolidation are essential to children's growth and development.There is a paucity of studies on the sleep characteristics and the effect of electronic media on them in healthy Indian infants and toddlers.The objectives were to assess the sleep characteristics of healthy Indian infants and toddlers and to examine the impact of electronic media on them.Materials and methods: This was a cross-sectional study at a tertiary center in India, among healthy children aged 3-36 months.Those with concurrent illness (e.g., gastroenteritis, respiratory illness) were excluded.A Hindi version of the Revised Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire (BISQ-R) was used to assess sleep patterns.Results: A total of 100 children were enrolled during the study period; their median (IQR) age was 12.1 (3.5, 18) months, with most of them being males (74%).The median (IQR) total sleep duration was 11 (10.0,13.3) hours.Electronic media exposure was noted in 83 (83%) children.Of them, 27 (32.5%)children were exposed to ≥1 hour/day.There was no significant difference in sleep duration, night awakenings, or wakefulness between media-exposed and media-unexposed groups in children.Similarly, there was no significant effect of media exposure on sleep characteristics.Conclusion: Sleep duration in infants and toddlers was below the international recommendation.A majority of children had exposure to electronic media, and one-third had exposure of at least 1 hour.Approximately three-fourths of parents didn't perceive the child's sleep problems.Clinical significance: There is an urgent need to routinely evaluate sleep characteristics in infants and toddlers and to increase awareness of sleep hygiene and media exposure among parents.
This study aims to explore and analyze effective learning strategies for gifted and talented students in elementary schools. Using a systematic literature review, it identifies the distinctive needs of gifted students and examines appropriate strategies, including curriculum enrichment, curriculum compacting, and acceleration. The findings indicate that gifted students need more challenging and targeted approaches to help them reach their full potential. Dynamic and relevant curriculum development, together with professional teacher training, is essential to creating a supportive and inspiring learning environment. Educational policies should therefore be more responsive to the needs of gifted students.
Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is associated with elevated rates of anxiety and depression, as well as reduced quality of life, yet the mechanisms linking motor difficulties to these outcomes remain incompletely specified. This article presents and critically evaluates the Integrated Stress-Adaptation Framework for DCD (ISAF-DCD), which synthesizes empirical findings on DCD with established stress theories, including the Environmental Stress Hypothesis, the transactional model of stress, and the Conservation of Resources model. Although the framework is presented with reference to comorbid neurodevelopmental conditions broadly, its evidential basis and worked examples concentrate specifically on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD); generalization to other neurodevelopmental conditions is plausible but has not been evaluated here. ISAF-DCD proposes that motor coordination difficulties influence mental, cognitive, and physical health through interacting environmental demands, primary and secondary stressors, appraisal and response processes, and personal and social factors. The framework is bidirectional and developmentally sensitive, allowing outcomes to feed back into subsequent stress and adaptation processes across the lifespan. I examine the model’s conceptual coherence, empirical support, and potential clinical utility, arguing that ISAF-DCD offers a theoretically grounded heuristic for organizing a fragmented literature while remaining provisional. Its proposed contributions include clarifying the multiple roles of resilience and social support, refining the classification of environmental demands, incorporating neurodevelopmental comorbidity as a cross-cutting factor, and representing reciprocal relationships between stress and motor functioning. To improve falsifiability, I specify the temporal and functional roles of key dual-role constructs and derive five core, empirically distinguishable propositions that differentiate ISAF-DCD from an expanded Environmental Stress Hypothesis. Direct empirical support for some components, particularly the proposed corticolimbic mechanisms, remains limited. ISAF-DCD should therefore be treated as a hypothesis-generating framework, focused primarily on ADHD and ASD as comorbid conditions and on mental health as its central but not exclusive outcome domain, that requires rigorous longitudinal and intervention-based evaluation.
Background Benefit finding may be associated with better mental health after the pandemic, but its longitudinal trajectory and its associations with psychosocial resources and mental health symptoms during recovery remain unclear. Objective This study examined trajectories of benefit finding among Chinese college students from approximately 3 to 15 months after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. We also examined its associations with emotion regulation, social connectedness, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms, together with indirect association patterns involving benefit finding. Methods A three-wave longitudinal study was conducted among 1,155 Chinese college students. Data were analyzed using parallel-process latent growth curve modeling. Results Social connectedness and benefit finding increased linearly over time, whereas depressive and anxiety symptoms decreased. Cognitive reappraisal was positively associated with the benefit finding intercept but negatively associated with its slope, whereas expressive suppression was not significantly associated with either growth factor. Social connectedness showed stronger associations with benefit finding trajectories than the emotion regulation variables. Benefit finding was negatively associated with depressive and anxiety symptoms at both the intercept and slope levels. Indirect association patterns through benefit finding were supported for social connectedness and both depressive and anxiety symptoms at the intercept and slope levels when inference was based on bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. Conclusions Benefit finding increased during the post-pandemic recovery period and was associated with lower depressive and anxiety symptoms. Social connectedness showed relatively strong associations with benefit finding trajectories, while cognitive reappraisal was associated with higher initial benefit finding but a slower subsequent increase. The indirect association patterns linked social connectedness with both symptom domains through benefit finding at the intercept and slope levels. These findings highlight psychosocial resources that merit further study in campus mental health research, while the observational design does not establish causal direction or temporal precedence.
Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the workload of medical personnel providing patient care, particularly inpatient nurses. Field interviews with nurses at hospitals in Bandung City indicated increased fatigue and sleepiness during the new normal adaptation period. This study aimed to measure mental workload and sleepiness among inpatient nurses in Bandung City. Methodology: A total of 275 inpatient nurses participated by completing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) questionnaire to assess mental workload and the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) to measure sleepiness. Results: Mental workload among inpatient nurses ranged from high to very high, with scores between 76.93 ± 13.18 and 81.36 ± 13.53. Hospital characteristics, gender, age, and marital status were identified as factors associated with excessive mental workload. KSS scores indicated that nurses were in the very alert to alert range after completing their duties. Furthermore, 60.73% of nurses experienced very high mental workload, while 68.73% were classified as very alert. Conclusion: The findings indicate the need for hospital management to improve working conditions through better shift scheduling, resource allocation, and equitable distribution of staff support facilities to address the needs of inpatient nurses. Originality: This study examines mental workload and sleepiness simultaneously among inpatient nurses in Bandung City and identifies factors associated with excessive mental workload, providing a basis for improving hospital workforce management during the new normal adaptation period.
Background Perceived social support is an important psychosocial resource for competitive athletes, while perceived stress is closely associated with athlete burnout. Drawing on conservation of resources theory and the cognitive-transactional model of stress, this study examines the relationships among perceived social support, perceived stress, and athlete burnout. Objectives This study aims to investigate the associations among perceived social support, perceived stress, and athlete burnout in competitive athletes, with particular attention to the statistical mediating role of perceived stress. Results Using cluster sampling, questionnaire data were collected from 252 competitive athletes across various sports, including track and field, swimming, and football. The results showed that perceived social support was negatively correlated with perceived stress ( r = -0.478, p < 0.01) and athlete burnout ( r = -0.282, p < 0.01), whereas perceived stress was positively correlated with athlete burnout ( r = 0.421, p < 0.01). Mediation analysis revealed a significant indirect association between perceived social support and athlete burnout through perceived stress ( B = -0.161, 95% CI [-0.240, -0.093]). The direct association was not statistically significant after accounting for perceived stress ( B = -0.095, p = 0.109). Conclusion Perceived social support is associated with lower levels of athlete burnout, both through its overall negative association with burnout and through a significant statistical indirect pathway involving perceived stress. These findings highlight the importance of strengthening athletes’ social support systems and addressing perceived stress in competitive sports settings. Given the cross-sectional design, the findings should be interpreted as associations rather than evidence of causal mediation.
Cognitive flexibility enables individuals to navigate unpredictable situations and rapid changes. Because the prefrontal cortex governs both cognitive flexibility and emotional input, lifetime traumatic experiences may influence its development. Despite this, research examining the impact of childhood trauma on cognitive flexibility in early adulthood remains limited. This study investigates the relationship using a sequential explanatory approach. A total of 275 undergraduate and diploma students (ages 18–25) from Gadjah Mada University completed the Adverse Childhood Experiences-International Questionnaire (ACE-IQ) and the Cognitive Flexibility Scale (CFS). Simple linear regression and thematic analysis indicated that childhood trauma predicts cognitive flexibility in early adulthood. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the long-term impact of childhood trauma on cognitive adaptability, which may inform interventions to enhance resilience in early adulthood. Future research should consider developmental timing, sociocultural environment, education, socioeconomic status, and spirituality, as well as experimental performance measures.
Background Achieving early glycemic control in adolescents with diabetes is associated with improved short- and long-term health outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between eating attitudes and glycemic control, as well as the factors associated with eating attitudes and glycemic control, in adolescents with diabetes. Methods This descriptive cross-sectional study included 143 adolescents with diabetes, aged 10–19 years, who attended a research hospital between February and April 2024. The data were collected using a Descriptive Information Form, Eating Attitudes Test (EAT) and an information form questioning the values of some metabolic variables. Results The mean age of the participants was 14 ± 2.3 years and 49.7% had diabetes between 1–5 years. The mean total score of the EAT scale was 16.62 ± 8.30. The mean score of the “Dieting” subscale of the EAT scale was 10.39 ± 5.58, the mean score of the “Bulimia food preoccupation” subscale was 2.33 ± 3.03 and the mean score of the “Oral Control” subscale was 3.79 ± 3.08. There was no significant difference between the mean EAT total score and glycemic control. Conclusions The mean EAT-26 total score was below the commonly used cutoff score, and no significant association was found between EAT-26 scores and HbA1c. Differences in EAT-26 total and subscale scores were observed according to selected demographic and clinical characteristics, including BMI, treatment modality, and treatment adherence. These findings describe self-reported eating attitudes in the study sample and support the inclusion of eating-related assessment within the holistic care of adolescents with Type 1 DM.
Executive function (EF) is foundational for school readiness, mental health, and social adaptation. Although cross-national studies document cultural variation in EF, less is known about whether EF differs across ethnic groups within the same national and educational context. In China, Yi, Bai, and Naxi children may differ in home language, childrearing practices, and educational beliefs, making them informative for examining universal and context-specific patterns of EF development. This study examined Executive Function (EF) development in a sample of 190 Chinese ethnic children (Yi, Bai, Naxi; 115 boys, 75 girls) aged 4–6 years. These findings revealed that, (1) Overall EF scores were highest for Bai children, followed by Naxi children, and than Yi children. (2) For inhibition control (IC), at ages 4 and 5, Bai and Naxi children performed significantly better than Yi children, whereas no significant differences were observed among the three ethnic groups at age 6. (3) For cognitive flexibility (CF), Bai and Naxi children are significantly better than Yi children. On the size, color, and shape sub-dimensions, pass rates were highest for Bai children, followed by Naxi and then Yi children; on the quantity sub-dimension, pass rates were highest for Naxi children, followed by Bai and then Yi children. (4) For working memory (WM), at ages 4 and 6, the ranking of scores across the three ethnic groups showed that Bai children obtained the highest scores, followed by Naxi children and than Yi children; at age 5, Bai children scored significantly higher than Naxi and Yi children. These findings contribute to theories of EF development by revealing both age-related convergence and cross-ethnic variation, and they inform culturally responsive early childhood education and intervention.
Sentiment analysis from video streams requires effective modeling of both temporal dynamics and multimodal cues. This paper presents a lightweight multimodal CNN-LSTM framework, designed for low-latency operation on live video streams, that classifies individuals' affective states as negative, neutral, or positive by jointly exploiting audio and visual information. The proposed system consists of four lightweight deep neural network models that fuse sequences of audio and visual features into a unified temporal stream, enabling the accumulation of sentiment evidence over time for robust prediction. To further enhance discriminative power, dynamic mouth state classification is incorporated, allowing the model to better capture subtle visual cues related to speech and sentiment. Experiments conducted on the Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech (RAVDESS) demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves a test accuracy of 84.89% on the three-class sentiment recognition task, competitive with substantially larger audio-visual architectures, while using an order of magnitude fewer parameters and maintaining low-latency operation. In addition, we provide a comprehensive comparison with multiple multimodal large language models (LLMs), evaluated under diverse input configurations and prompting strategies. The results offer practical insights into the strengths and limitations of contemporary LLMs for audio-visual sentiment analysis and highlight the continued effectiveness of compact, task-specific neural architectures for streaming audio-visual input.
Background Most person-centered research on exercise motivation has identified static profiles, leaving unclear how motivational configurations change over time, what psychological experiences are associated with those changes, and whether transitions predict subsequent exercise. This study examined the short-term mobility of exercise-regulation profiles, psychological-need predictors of specific transitions, and their prospective associations with later leisure-time exercise. Methods A three-wave prospective study followed 1,780 students from six Chinese colleges at approximately 4-week intervals. Exercise regulation, exercise-specific psychological need satisfaction and frustration, and leisure-time exercise were assessed at each wave. Continuous-indicator latent transition analysis identified longitudinal motivational profiles and transition probabilities. Posterior-probability-weighted models examined origin-wave need satisfaction and frustration as predictors of eligible transitions and tested whether first-interval transitions were associated with final-wave exercise after prior exercise was considered. Results Six profiles were retained: amotivated–controlled, low-regulation, mixed intrinsic–controlled, identified-dominant, intrinsic-dominant, and high autonomous–introjected. Overall profile stability was substantial but incomplete, with 76.9 and 73.8% of posterior transition mass remaining on the stability diagonal across the two intervals. The largest off-diagonal transition was from low regulation to high autonomous–introjected motivation (18.0 and 20.1%). After Holm correction, greater need satisfaction was associated with lower odds of moving from intrinsic-dominant or high autonomous–introjected motivation to low regulation (odds ratios = 0.47–0.49), whereas greater need frustration was associated with lower odds of moving from low regulation to identified- or intrinsic-dominant profiles (odds ratios = 0.41–0.62). In models controlling baseline exercise, movement from amotivated–controlled or low regulation to high autonomous–introjected motivation was associated with greater subsequent exercise, whereas several transitions toward less internalized configurations were associated with lower exercise. After additional adjustment for exercise measured at the transition endpoint, only the low-regulation-to-high autonomous–introjected transition remained significant. Conclusion Exercise motivation was substantially stable yet meaningfully mobile over short periods. Psychological-need experiences were associated with specific, origin-dependent motivational transitions, and selected transitions prospectively differentiated later exercise behavior. The findings support a dynamic and state-dependent view of exercise motivation and suggest that the psychological conditions relevant to maintaining internalized motivation may differ from those involved in moving out of low regulation.
The research aimed to examine the effects of gamification environments on university students' achievement, flow experiences, and emotional states. This study utilized a mixed-methods design, incorporating a quasi-experimental approach for the quantitative phase and a phenomenological approach for the qualitative phase. The study group consisted of 80 students (Quizizz, n = 32; Quizlet, n = 48) enrolled in the Educational Psychology course at a state university. Data were collected through the Achievement Test, Flow Experience Scale, and Positive and Negative Affect Scale. Both groups showed significant pre-test to post-test gains in achievement, with no significant difference between the two groups. Flow experience was positively correlated with positive emotion in both groups, but with achievement only in the Quizlet group. In the Quizizz group, achievement was moderately and negatively correlated with negative emotion, whereas no such relationship was found in the Quizlet group. No significant relationship was found between achievement and positive emotion in either group. Qualitative findings revealed that students actively engaged in both environments, reported higher motivation, and found learning more enjoyable. However, they experienced the platforms differently. Quizizz users emphasized excitement through competition and scoring, whereas Quizlet users highlighted confidence gained from repetition and individual progress. Overall, these results indicate that gamification tools led to similar achievement gains, but through different flow and emotional processes.
