Gender Differences in Allocation of Attention and Read Time in an Educational History Game

Abstract

Previous research has shown that female students sometimes benefit more than males when it comes to interacting with pedagogical agents. In our analysis we examined students' tendency to attend to and read feedback text that were visually signalled by a teachable agent (TA), or by an arrow (AR), or non-signalled in a control condition (CN). The results indicate that male learners may benefit from having a TA signalling such feedback texts. The female learners in the study allocated their attention quite similarly between the three different signaling conditions whereas the male learners were most likely to attend to the feedback when presented by their TA. However, for reading the feedback text, both male and female students were more inclined to read the feedback texts when presented by their TA, compared to in the two other conditions.