ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Connecting with Learning: Motivation, Affect

and Cognition in Interest Processes
Mary Ainley
Published online: 5 November 2006
#
Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2006
Abstract In this paper we draw on our research on interest to explore the questions posed
for this special issue. Interest is conceptualized as an affective state that represents students
subjective experience of learning; the state that arises from either situational triggers or a
well-developed individual interest. Drawing on the broad research literature on interest, and
using our own findings in relation to the state of interest, we consider how interest
represents an integration of affect, motivation and cognition. In particular, how the state of
interest brings together motivation in the form of prior goals and interests and focuses them
into on-task behavior. We illustrate ways that our research monitoring on-task sequences of
affect and behavior, is confronting some of the methodological concerns posed in relation
to measurement of affective states. Finally, we examine some of the paths by which
triggered states of interest can contribute to productive student engagement with learning.
Keywords Interest
.
Engagement
.
On-task measures
Introduction
The overarching questions for this collection of papers concern the place of affect in
theories and models used to inform educational thinking and practice; the nature of affect;
its relationships with motivational and cognitive processes; the methodological issues that
need to be confronted; and how we can apply this knowledge and understanding to
questions of student engagement. In this paper, it is argued that affect is as central to
understanding the character of educational experiences as are motivation and cognition.
Furthermore, affective, motivational and cognitive processes, while they can be separated
conceptually and empirically, are interdependent in the ongoing experience of students. We
illustrate these propositions drawing from our research on interest.
Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405
DOI 10.1007/s10648-006-9033-0
M. Ainley (*)
Psychology Department, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: maryda@unimelb.edu.au
In a recent article, Hidi and Harackiewicz (2000) review findings from interest research
and achievement goal research as they relate to a critical issue facing education at the
beginning of the twenty-first century: How to motivate the academically unmotivated?
Reviews such as those of Hidi and Harackiewicz (2000) and Eccles and Wigfield (2002),
draw attention to the fact that young adolescents are often distinguished by their lack of
connection with schooling and are described as being unmotivated, disaffected and
disengaged. Terms such as unmotivated, disaffected, and disengaged implicitly recognize
that motivation, affect, and cognition are intimately linked. Being unmotivated may mean
students lack achievement goals, or, it may mean they do not see any value in the
educational experiences open to them (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000; Willms, 2003). When
students are described as disaffected, it signals that educational experiences do not trigger
positive feelings. This is concerning, as disengaged students do not extend their abilities
and skills. So, whether directing attention to students who are excited about learning, or,
students who are disaffected and unmotivated, questions concerning the place of affect in
the psychological processes that support learning need to be addressed.
Following the structure of the questions posed to participants for this special issue we
consider, firstly, perspectives on the nature of affect and describe the specific way this is
approached in our research (Question 1). Secondly, the links and integration between affect,
motivation and cognition are explored with special attention given to why this might be
important for educational theory and practice (Questions 2 and 3). Thirdly, some specific
methodological issues that confront research in this area are examined and we illustrate
ways that we have addressed these in our research (Question 4). Finally, we come back to
consider what the study of interest has to offer in relation to the challenge of understanding
ways students engage with learning (Question 5).
Affect
What is meant when we use the term affect in our research? As the adaptive significance of
emotion has been re-discovered, the role of affect in human behavior has increasingly
become a feature of a range of psychological theories. Social and developmental psy-
chologists often link their interest in emotions back to Darwins (1965) basic proposition
that emotions are critical for human adaptation and survival (e.g., see collections such as
Forgas, 2000; Lewis & Granic, 2000). This means that in addition to their more commonly
researched disruptive and disorganizing impacts, emotions are being examined from the
perspective of their adaptive functions (Fredrickson, 2001). Rosenberg and Fredrickson
(1998) attribute part of this resurgence of interest in affect to increasing awareness that
affect in one way or another is implicated in a wide range of psychological phenomena and
with this has come a crossing of specialization boundaries. More recently, emotion and its
adaptive role in behavior has also been highlighted as being of special significance for
understanding student learning (e.g., Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002). In particular,
there is an increasing recognition that at the process level, many of the terms we use to
describe motivation in achievement contexts need to be supplemented by a consideration of
affective dimensions that are influenced by motivation or that are critical components of the
motivation process (Efklides & Petkaki, 2005; Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002; Sansone &
Harackiewicz, 1996; Sansone & Smith, 2000).
Because affect is such a pervasive dimension in human behavior, it has been researched
from a wide range of perspectives. Educational questions concerning affect need to be
located in this literature and draw on its findings. Two issues that feature in contemporary
392 Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405
writings on affect will be considered here: levels of analysis in studying affect, and
distinctions between affective traits and states.
The first issue concerns the level of analysis. Cacioppo, Gardner, and Berntson (1999)
distinguish investigations focusing on affect as subjective feelings and experience, and
investigations focusing on the structure of the affect system. Investigations at the
experiential level use participant reports of their feelings to identify the role of affect in
on-going behavior. On the other hand, investigations exploring the structural relations
between components of the affective system identify neuropsychological properties of the
affective system that have implications for how situations are experienced and consequent
behavior (e.g., Watson, Wiese, Vaidya, & Tellegen, 1999). These perspectives are not
alternatives but provide complementary insights for understanding behavior. A similar
emphasis on the functional structure of the emotion system can be seen in the work of
Pekrun et al. (2002), where emotions are defined as coordinated sets of interrelated psy-
chological processes, including affective, cognitive, physiological, and motivational
components.
The approach we have taken considers the role of affect in achievement behavior by
focusing on students reports of how they are feeling as they work through tasks, modeled
on classroom learning activities. In particular, we have investigated the role of interest in
students achievement behavior. To index the positive feelings that go with being attracted
to and focusing attention on specific task content, we have recorded students ratings of
how interested they feel at different points in their interaction with a task and in response to
a range of tasks.
The second issue concerns different approaches to affect; trait and state perspectives. For
example, Rosenbergs (1998) model separates affective traits from state phenomena such as
moods and emotions. Affective traits are stable pre-dispositions that function through the
way they exert an organizational influence on affective states (p. 250). This approach to
affect has been used by Linnenbrink (Linnenbrink, 2006; Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002)
when exploring relationships between achievement goals and affects. The trait and state
distinction is an important one across many educational questions as it acknowledges that
what students bring to their learning in the form of traits, predispositions and orientations,
plays an important role in their response to specific learning tasks, the state perspective.
However, it is also critical to acknowledge the range of possible relations between trait and
state. The predictive relation between trait and state is variable, and in some cases the state
may be independent of relevant trait dimensions (Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Mischel, Shoda,
& Mendoza-Denton, 2002; Pintrich, 2000).
Distinctions between trait and state, or the personal and the situational, feature
prominently in contemporary research on interest. For example, researchers who have
investigated interest from the personal or individual perspective refer to individual interest
as a dispositional motivational characteristic or a relatively stable evaluative orientation
towards certain domains (Krapp, 2002; Schiefele, 1996; Schiefele & Rheinberg, 1997).
Renninger (2000) uses the term pre-disposition rather than disposition or orientation and
emphasizes the role played by knowledge in the development of an individual interest.
Individual interest is defined by Renninger as a persons relatively enduring predisposition
to reengage particular content over time (see Hidi & Renninger, 2006, p. 113). This
perspective on individual interest gives a stronger place to knowledge components than is
found in the personobject theory described by Krapp and Schiefele (Krapp, 2002;
Schiefele, 1996; Schiefele & Rheinberg, 1997). Describing the role of individual interest in
her Model of Domain Learning, Alexander (2004) refers to individual interest as a long-
term investment or deep-seated involvement in the target field (p. 286). All of these
Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405 393
researchers propose that individual interest, whether viewed as trait or predisposition has an
organizing function in relation to specific states; that is, under certain circumstances the
personal is expressed as state. On the other hand, situational interest refers to the transitory
state; the focused attention and the immediate feelings triggered by the situation.
Researchers adopting this perspective have documented specific stimulus characteristics
likely to be associated with arousal of a temporary state of interest (Bergin, 1999; Hidi,
1990; Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Mitchell, 1993; Schraw & Lehman, 2001; Wade, 2001).
Across both perspectives, researchers include affective components when they describe
interest. Both individual and situational interest, involve positive affect. However, as Hidi
and Harackiewicz (2000) point out situational interest may also involve negative affect.
While factors associated with the development of individual interest and the character-
istics of situations that trigger situational interest have been the main focus of interest
research, models such as the Four-Phase Model of Interest Development proposed by Hidi
and Renninger (2006) also give attention to the underlying biological system. Interest,
whether individual or situational, is underpinned by the functioning of what Panksepp
(2000) refers to as the neurological seeking system, a basic component of the biology of
emotion.
Within this broader framework of research on interest, our research is primarily
addressing the level of students subjective experience of learning; the aroused state of
interest. In order to investigate the role of interest in students learning, our research focuses
on the micro-level of single tasks, the kind that could occur in any classroom. We monitor
sequences of student ratings of their feelings about specific learning tasks. Using interactive
computer technology, students report how they feel at critical task points (e.g., pre-task, on-
task and post-task). This means we are concerned with the phenomenological level of
students personal feelings. Changing patterns of affect across the course of a task are
recorded as students report how they are feeling in response to special probes made up of
emotion icons. Relationships between personal orientations, pre-dispositions or traits and
on-task affective states can be identified as can the situational triggers for affective states.
Predictive relations between individual interest and the state of interest at critical points in a
task have been identified in a number of studies where young adolescents reactions to
reading text passages have been monitored. The pre-disposition is expressed in the
triggered state. For example, students with a stronger general interest in learning, measured
as depth-of-interest curiosity, reported higher expectations of interest in relation to text-titles
for science and popular culture topics (Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002). Individual interest
has been shown to be a significant predictor of students immediate reaction to text-titles. In
addition, states triggered by the text-titles change in response to changing text content, even
over quite short passages of text (Ainley, Hidi et al., 2002; Ainley, Corrigan, & Richardson,
2005; Ainley, Hillman, & Hidi, 2002; Buckley, Hasen, & Ainley, 2004). By monitoring
interest levels at the beginning, during and at the end of a task, we have been able to show
that for interest to support learning the state needs to be maintained across the task.
In addition to monitoring the state of interest, a range of other affective states triggered
by task content have also been monitored. For example, in a number of studies we have
used two hypothetical scenarios to assess whether students are using the on-task probes in a
way that discriminates between different situations. Students are first asked to rate their
level of interest using a 5-point Likert-type scale (1= bored, 5 = interested) and then to
select from a range of emotions to further indicate how they are feeling. The hypothetical
situations ask students to imagine they are about to take a mathematics test and then to
imagine they have just won a 2 week holiday of their choice. Responses to these two
scenarios from a sample of 166 students from seventh to tenth Grade (Andrews, Ainley, &
394 Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405
Fig. 1 Percentage of respondents (a) indicating different levels of intensity on boredinterested dimension
for two hypothetical scenarios, (b) choosing specific emotion icons for two hypothetical scenarios.
Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405 395
Frydenberg, 2004) are presented in Fig. 1. The upper panel shows the distribution of ratings
on the boredinterested scale, the lower panel the additional feelings selected. As expected
the holiday scenario drew a very narrow range of responses both for interest ratings and
associated feelings, while the mathematics test scenario shows a wide range of interest
ratings coupled with a spread of associated emotions.
Students subjective feelings in response to learning tasks are recorded as ratings and
these ratings are used to identify the network of relationships connecting on-task interest
states with students personal characteristics. On the other side of the model are the positive
effects of interest on features of students engagement with the task such as their effort and
persistence (e.g., Ainley et al., 2005), the on-task salience of specific achievement goals
(Ainley & Patrick, 2006), and with students reflective judgments about the quality of their
own performance (Ainley & Chan, 2006; Hidi, Ainley, Berndorff, & Del Favero, 2006).
What we are presenting in terms of understanding the character of interest in students
learning also needs to be mapped onto more general models of affect in relation to learning.
For example, Linnenbrink (2006) has adapted the circumplex model of affect developed by
Feldman Barrett & Russell (1998) as a general model and has applied it to educational
issues. In this model, the intersection of activation and valence dimensions defines an
affective space whereby positive (pleasant) and negative (unpleasant), activating and
deactivating are distinguished. One axis transecting the circumplex model is defined by
tired and exhausted in the deactivated and unpleasant quadrant and excited in the activated
pleasant quadrant. What we have investigated as the state of interest aligns with the tired
excited dimension. The studies we have reported have not been designed to sample the
extremes (tired and excited) of this dimension. However, our on-task rating scales anchored
from not at all interested to very interested, or from bored to interested, lie between the
extremes of tired and excited and are accessing one of the core affects represented in the
circumplex model. In our research, the lower end of the on-task ratings represent unpleasant
or negative deactivation and are associated with students choosing to quit the task when
given the opportunity. Ratings at the higher end of the dimension represent pleasant or
positive feelings of activation and students choose to continue with the task (Ainley, et al.,
2002; 2005). Because of its positive relationships with persistence, this affective dimension
is one of the core dimensions for students engagement with learning tasks.
In sum, our approach to the study of interest focuses on the level of students subjective
experience and conceptualizes interest as an affective state. This state has antecedents in the
shape of the dispositions students bring to their learning, and consequences for students
performance. This will be examined further in the next section when we consider the
integration of affect, motivation and cognition.
Affect, Motivation and Cognition
The topic for this special issue refers to integration of affect, motivation and cognition. One
common meaning for the term integrate is combine or form into a whole (Oxford, 1994,
p. 424). In the context of questions concerning relationships between affect, motivation and
cognition, this meaning is important because integration indicates that when a set of factors
occur together the output or product is a new configuration or gestalt. In this section we
examine how processes of positive activation (affect), direction (motivation), and
knowledge seeking (cognition) come together in the state of interest and how this state
represents an integration of cognitive, motivational and affective components.
The interpretation of integration we have described is consistent with a number of
contemporary approaches to understanding relationships between affect, motivation and
396 Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405
cognition. For example, dynamic systems theory (see Lewis & Granic, 2000) offers a way
of looking at the relationship between motivation, affect and cognition that can be applied
to learning as well as to developmental issues. Basic assumptions of nonlinear causation
and self-organization underlie dynamic systems theories.
From a dynamic systems perspective, novel forms arise in development through the
spontaneous co-ordination of system constituents that interact with each other
recursively in the service of a particular function, task or goal (Lewis & Granic,
2000, p. 45).
This model is particularly pertinent to consideration of interest as a combination of
motivation, affect and cognition. The metaphors used in some of the papers on emotion in
Lewis & Granics (2000) volume demonstrate that the combination of affect and cognition
is more than a simple addition of a set of variables, or the influence of one variable on
another. Panksepp (2000) uses the term interpenetrate to refer to the connection between
affect and cognition: emotional values interpenetrate with cognitive activities (p. 253).
When discussing how this applies to a childs developing experience of the world of objects
and people, he uses the term imbue: events become imbued with special affective
meanings that can guide actions...the cognitive apparatus will be permanently imbued
with an affective tone that will put a characteristic stamp on an individuals life activities
(p. 254). Co-occurrence of cognitive and affective components generates a new orga-
nization, or system. An earlier form of this model of integration of affect and cognition
can be seen in Izards (1977) differential emotions theory. Izard proposed that complex
human behavior involves the operation of affectivecognitive structures, functional
organizations built out of the co-occurrence of specific affects based on discrete emotion
systems, and specific cognitive units. More recently Izard and colleagues (Izard, Ackerman,
Schoff, & Fine, 2000) use dynamic systems theory to reiterate their proposals concerning
the crucial role affectivecognitive structures play in complex human behavior.
Of particular importance for this discussion are the affectivecognitive structures or units
that develop through repeated linking of specific emotions to a class of thoughts, images or
ideas. In the earlier quotation from Lewis and Granic (2000), it was suggested that new
organizations arise in the service of a particular function, task, or goal (p. 5). More
closely related to learning and achievement settings, Dweck (1992) proposes that the
achievement goal construct brings together motivation, cognition and affect whether studied
at the level of active state, at the personal level of individual differences or at the level of
the interaction between person and situation: Evidence increasingly suggests that behavior,
cognition, and affect form coherent patterns that are organized around goals and goal
strategies (p. 166). The interconnection is described here as interaction and refers to
coordinated, interacting systems (p. 166). The model of interrelationship between these
variables is based on evidence that students goals have significant effects on strategic
behavior, self-perceptions and feelings about the task and setting (Dweck, 1992; Dweck,
Mangels, & Good, 2004). A similar perspective is evident in Boekaerts (2001) model of
motivation in achievement settings. The central motivational core consists of habitual
behavior such as goal-setting, general traits and domain-specific beliefs while students
current concerns are affective responses to the specific learning context.
Hence, a major contribution of these theories is the proposition that in the service of
general achievement goals (Dweck et al., 2004), or broader sets of goals (Boekaerts, 2001),
coordinated sequences of affect and cognition trigger actions that expand personal knowl-
edge and competencies. Students come to the task with a range of goals and it is through
interaction of these goals with task demands that specific on-task feeling states are
Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405 397
triggered. The behavior that follows, whether it involves disengagement or engagement
with the task content, derives from the specific affectivecognitive organizations that are
salient. Arousal of positive, activating on-task feeling states with potentially rich con-
nections to past experiences, events and ideas prompt further thinking and action in
relation to the task. A similar perspective on the integration of motivation and affect can be
seen in the research Linnenbrink (2006) reports identifying how affect might function to
mediate the relationship between achievement goals and students engagement in
schooling. Linnenbrink proposes that pleasant affect has a positive mediating function
and negative affect a negative mediating function, in relation to the predictive effects of
both mastery and performance achievement goals on behavioral and cognitive engagement.
In our research, we have been able to demonstrate that the state of interest mediates the
relation between students general achievement goals and salient on-task mastery goals. At
the micro-level of a single achievement task, Ainley and Patrick (2006) report that interest
(recorded mid-task as a self-report rating of how students are feeling) mediated the
influence of students mastery achievement goals on the salience of on-task mastery goals.
These findings are consistent with the relationships between achievement goals and
individual interest that Harackiewicz and colleagues (see Harackiewicz, Barron, Carter,
Lehto, & Elliot, 1997; Harackiewicz, Barron, Tauer, & Carter, 2000) report. In under-
graduate students taking studies in psychology, mastery achievement goals are predictive of
individual interest in psychology and also of students later participation in psychology
courses. Hence, both at the level of interest measured as on-task affective state and
measured as individual interest, there is evidence of goals and affect coming together in
integrated sequences that increase students participation in learning.
In relation to other motivational variables such as self-efficacy, we have also investigated a
mediating role for interest measured as an on-task affective state. Self-efficacy was measured
as students confidence in their ability to perform well on the task they were about to
commence. The effect of self-efficacy on students post-task reflective judgments about the
quality of what they had achieved was mediated by the intervening level of interest, measured
as on-task affective state (Ainley & Chan, 2006; Hidi et al., 2006).
Clearly the affective state of interest, as reported by students engaged in classroom
learning tasks, is one component of broader sequences of motivation (e.g., achievement
goals, individual interests) and activity representing engagement with learning tasks. The
state of interest links motivation, affect and further cognitive activity.
However, the experience of interest involves more than affect. It has motivational and
cognitive properties. In his work investigating interest as an emotion, Silvia (2005) reports
that complexity and competence underlie the appraisal structure of college students ratings
of interest across a range of content and using a range of methodologies. These findings
highlight both cognitive and motivational aspects of interest as it involves an impetus to
find out more about the target object. From a different perspective, Fredrickson (1998,
2001) includes interest as one of the four positive emotions (joy, interest, contentment and
love) that function by broadening the individuals thoughtaction repertoire. She proposes
that understanding of these positive emotions has been limited by the prevailing prototype
of emotion established from the study of negative emotions. Positive emotions broaden
experience and build cognitive skills and competencies. Using the work of Tomkins (1962)
and Izard (1977), Fredrickson (2001) defines interest as a momentary thoughtaction
tendency that involves an impulse to explore. Interest involves feelings of being animated
and enlivened and triggers actions that are aimed at expanding knowledge and experience
of the target content. The strong consensus across these perspectives is that in the state of
interest affect, motive and cognition function as a coordinated system. The feeling of
398 Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405
interest involves positive activation (affect), directed attention and impulses to action
(motivation), and, information-seeking (cognition).
In summary, interest as the immediate reaction to a new learning task is an affective state
that involves feelings of arousal, alertness, attention and concentration and is a key variable
in the motivation of learning. Interest as general orientation, or individual interest, is also a
key factor contributing to on-task feelings of activation and interest and engagement in
learning. The general implication we draw from these findings is that there are com-
binations of affective and cognitive processes which persist across time as organized
processing structures and these structures function as motivation for learning. In new
situations perceptual and appraisal processes draw on the content of salient affective
cognitive processing structures to generate specific states that contain the impulse to
explore and engage further with learning tasks.
Methodological Challenges
The study of affect and its role in education presents a number of methodological chal-
lenges which we are addressing through use of interactive software. Students working with
the software are presented with a learning task and we simultaneously monitor affective
responses along with students task activity. Here we will describe how we have addressed
two of the main methodological concerns that have been identified in this area: the dynamic
and often fleeting character of affective states and the difficulty of making causal and
directional inferences from reactions recorded at a single point after the event.
In a review on emotions in education, Schutz and DeCuir (2002) suggest that one of the
major challenges for researchers is that traditional research methods in educational
psychology are not suited to capturing the fluid and changing nature of emotions and
affective states. Sansone and Thoman (2005) identified the same issue adding that feelings
and emotions can be both predictors and outcomes. Dynamic changes in feeling states call
for methods that can capture these patterns over time. In order to understand the experience
of learning and the variability across students, it is essential to have research tools that
accurately represent the perspective of the learner as they engage with a task. As argued in
an earlier paper (Ainley & Hidi, 2002), questionnaires and self-rating scales administered
before a learning task can measure expectancies and anticipatory affective reactions and
these are an important part of the story. Similarly, questionnaires and rating scales ad-
ministered after the task has been completed provide a retrospective on the event which is
not necessarily the same as the state experienced while doing the task. Post-task reflections
on what it was like doing the task risk being colored by the students knowledge of how the
task turned out; the climax of the narrative text they were reading; the important principle
that explained the issue in the science text; or the degree to which they were able to answer
the test questions posed at the end of the task. To access students on-task affective states
requires a measure that directly monitors those changing on-task states.
Our first attempts at developing such a methodology use some of the potential of
interactive computer technology in the form of on-task probes. The software (Between the
Lines: BTL) has been designed to present on-line tasks that are similar to activities students
might encounter in a normal classroom. While there is still considerable variability between
countries and between schools within countries, many schools have become highly
computerized (OECD, 2001) and this is becoming a normal mode for students accessing
and working with information. Something that may have been unusual when we started our
first studies back in the late 1990s has become an accepted mode of learning.
Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405 399
To monitor the state of interest across a task we use probes that consist of a simple
self-rating. The current form of the probe presents a sequence of three screens. The first
screen consists of a self-rating on a 5-point Likert-type scale anchored as bored to
interested (or not very interested to very interested) and students are asked to indicate how
they feel about the task. The second screen presents a range of face icons representing a set
of emotions and students are asked to use the icons to show how they feel. In different
studies we have varied the icons according to specific research goals. One set we have used
frequently consists of icons representing the basic emotions from Izards (1977) differential
emotions theory. A second set represent the achievement emotions defined by Pekrun et al.
(2002). The final probe screen presents the chosen icon and students are asked to make a
self-report rating of intensity. If the research questions suggest that more than one emotion
needs to be recorded, the probe can repeat the second and third screens any number of
times.
A number of measurement issues are raised by these techniques which we have
addressed in detail elsewhere (Ainley & Patrick, 2006). For example, issues concerning the
reliability and validity of single-item measures and possible intrusiveness and distraction
effects of the probe need to be examined.
In relation to questions of reliability and validity, when monitoring transient states the
focus is the feeling at the specific moment. Therefore, internal consistency and testretest
reliability are not appropriate. A number of areas of research, for example, psychological
medicine (McCormack, Horne, & Sheather, 1988; Nyenhuis, Stern, Yamamoto, Luchetta, &
Arruda, 1997; Patrician, 2004; Temple et al., 2004) and occupational psychology (Wanous,
Reichers, & Hudy, 1997) have made wide use of single-item scales. The consensus from
these studies appears to be that when the construct being measured is relatively narrow,
well-known to the respondent and is unambiguous, there is good evidence that single-item
measures relate consistently to other forms of measurement. Recently, a study by Goetz,
Pekrun, and Hall (2006) has shown that single-item measures of emotional states correlate
well with longer forms of measurement. With respect to the validity of these measures,
according to Messick (1995), the validity of measures is best established through
demonstrating convergent and discriminant relationships with other variables within the
domain.
Measures such as our on-task probes run the risk of compromising validity by interfering
with students attention and concentration. In response to this concern we have recorded the
amount of time spent in responding to the on-task probe screens and the results indicate that
students on average take approximately 30 s to respond to the probe (Ainley & Chan,
2006). However, further investigation is required to establish that this does not interfere
significantly with students performance on the task.
The second methodological concern involves the causal inferences that can be drawn
from data collected at a single point in time (Linnenbrink, 2006). Interactive software that
logs students feelings, reactions and decisions across the course of the learning task allows
the researcher to preserve important sequences in the data record. In all of our studies
(Ainley, Hidi et al., 2002; Ainley, Hillman et al., 2002; Hidi et al., 2006), time logs that plot
students paths through the task, probe responses, choices of which material to access, and
decisions about when to start writing an answer are recorded in sequence. Within the frame
of the task itself, sequences and contingencies can be identified. For example, changes in
the state of interest across the course of the task can be detected and included in the
predictive models that are tested (Ainley et al., 2005; Buckley et al., 2004). Harnessing the
potential of the research capabilities offered by interactive software is only starting to be
used in educational research and we have only scratched the surface. Further developments
400 Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405
in this area will expand our access to students on-task experiences and enrich our under-
standing of the learning process.
The Broader Educational Significance
Out the outset of this paper we referred to the question of student engagement (Eccles,
Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998; Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000). This same concern is
documented in major international studies of schooling (e.g., Willms, 2003). It is through
appreciation of the essential interdependence between affect, motivation and cognition that
knowledgeof concepts suchas interest canbeappliedmost productivelyineducational settings.
In a recent review Fredericks, Blumenfeld, and Paris (2004) separate three main forms of
engagement; behavioral, emotional and cognitive. Behavioral engagement is indexed by
participation measures, for example, school attendance, effort, persistence and attention.
Emotional engagement includes affective reactions to classroom, school or teacher and is
measured as specific affects such as interest, boredom, happiness, anxiety. Cognitive
engagement refers to cognitive forms of investment in learning, for example, goals,
strategic and self-regulatory processes. Although it is important to separate these forms of
engagement for research purposes, Fredricks and colleagues emphasize that in reality these
factors are dynamically interrelated within the individual; they are not isolated processes
(p. 61). They suggest that when the insights from each of these strands of research on
engagement are brought together it may provide a richer characterization of children than
is possible in research on single components (p. 61). As we have demonstrated the state of
interest in learning mediates between the personal, whether in the form of well-developed
individual interests or achievement goals, and on-task behavioral engagement. Hence, the
important educational questions in relation to interest and learning concern the ways that
interest can be developed in support of learning.
From what we know it is clear that there are at least two main routes to triggering
interest in learning, one builds on knowledge of situational interest, the other on knowledge
of individual interest. Situational interest can be triggered through attention to the way
learning is presented. Presenting new learning tasks in novel ways such as using new
computer technologies triggers immediate student interest. Having triggered interest, the
problem then is to maintain the interaction and build on the information seeking aspects of
interest. This is the harder part and depends on how factors such as novelty, ambiguity and
challenge are embedded in the on-going task (Cordova & Lepper, 1996; Mayer & Chandler,
2001; Mitchell, 1993). Analyses such as those of Shraw (Schraw & Lehman, 2001) in
relation to structural features of text materials, for example, coherence and vividness,
provide some guidance concerning features that are known to trigger and maintain
situational interest in reading text. In our studies using text materials we have found
significant topic effects. Some of these effects are predictable in relation to specific student
characteristics such as gender. For example in studies where we have used excerpts from
texts used in senior secondary English classes, and which we have chosen to represent
gender stereotypes in reading interests, there are strong gender effects on the level of
interest triggered by specific text-titles (Ainley, Hillman et al., 2002; Graham, Tisher,
Ainley, & Kennedy, 2005). What we have shown is that there is an immediate affective
reaction to the task which influences subsequent affective reactions and decisions about
reading more of the text. In addition, if the task content represents a theme of universal
human significance (Hidi, 1990) or something that is of common concern to all the
students in the class, then for most students there is an immediate triggering of interest.
Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405 401
Triggering interest activates a system that generates positive feelings, focuses attention
on the object that has triggered interest, and in the absence of stronger competing motives
will prompt cognitive activity. For example, a student notices images of destruction from a
recent earthquake in a magazine. Interest is triggered, which means the student feels
enlivened as they are attracted to pick up the magazine. A connection has been established
between them and the information source. Thirty minutes later when they put the magazine
down, their knowledge of what happened in the earthquake and its aftermath has been
expanded. The earthquake example has been chosen to highlight another feature of the
experience of connection between the student and the magazine article. Interest describes
the state of positive activation and information seeking that occurred. However, interest was
probably not the only affective reaction the student had to the information they were
reading. The images and information concerning the recent earthquake also triggered
feelings of sadness and sympathy for the victims, anger at stories of young men looting, and
some fear that a similar tragedy might occur in their own country. Although engagement
with any achievement activity is supported by active triggering of interest, many
achievement activities do not have these added features of personal and human significance
that trigger additional emotions.
A second route to triggering interest in learning is dependent on a match between the
students individual interests and the content of the task. When an individual has a well-
developed individual interest or pre-disposition to engage with objects and activities of a
specified class then a simple encounter between person and object is likely to trigger a state
of interest. For example, a student with a well-developed interest in science fiction is likely
to have that interest activated by something as simple as sighting a poster in a shop window
advertising the latest science fiction novel. Simultaneously positive affect arousal and
focused attention is triggered, the student becomes intent on getting access to a copy of the
book (motivation). Cognitions, in the form of what Renninger (2000) describes as curiosity
questions, arise as the student wonders about the specific issues and twists in plot
development that might be in the new book. When the concern is for triggering interest in
classroom learning, this route depends on students developmental history in relation to the
relevant domain (e.g., Alexander, 2004; Hidi & Renninger, 2006).
Although these two paths to engagement cover a lot of what has been established in
research on interest, they are not the only paths to interest and task engagement. For
example, Sansone and colleagues (Sansone, Weir, Harpster, & Morgan, 1992; Sansone,
Wiebe, & Morgan, 1999) show that under certain circumstances, undergraduate students
confronted with a boring task find ways to make the task interesting. Clearly there are many
more directions that can be explored to identify ways that the interdependence of affect,
motivation and cognition functioning as interest support student learning and this is the
challenge for future research.
Summary and Conclusions
In sum, our approach to the study of interest focuses on the level of students subjective
experience and conceptualizes interest as an affective state. This state has antecedents in the
shape of the dispositions students bring to their learning, and consequences for students
performance. Interest as the immediate reaction to a new learning task is an affective state
that involves feelings of arousal, alertness, attention and concentration and is a key variable
in the motivation of learning. In new situations perceptual and appraisal processes draw on
the content of salient affectivecognitive processing structures to generate interest. Using
402 Educ Psychol Rev (2006) 18:391405
interactive software we have been able to monitor dynamic states and behavior across the
course of learning tasks to show contingencies between dispositional and state variables.
Further development of this approach to understanding interest as affective state; how it
combines affect, motivation and cognition; and how it relates to students learning, may
provide important insights for intervening with young adolescents who are disaffected,
unmotivated and disengaged from schooling.
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