An examination of situational interest and its sources.

BACKGROUND: Situational interest is articulated theoretically as a construct associated with five dimensional sources: novelty, challenge, attention demand, exploration intention, and instant enjoyment. AIMS: This study aimed to examine the influence of the dimensional sources on situational interest. It was hypothesised that the dimensional sources function differently to contribute to situational interest and that the influence of a source might be mediated by others. SAMPLE: Two samples of 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students were used in the study. There were 281 students (57% male, 43% female) in the first sample and 191 (47% male, 53% female) in the second. METHOD: Students in Sample A evaluated situational interest and the dimensional sources in tasks of analysing jogging and gymnastic stunts on video. Those in Sample B evaluated them in tasks of learning basketball. Correlation and regression analyses and path analyses were used to test the theoretical model. RESULTS: Instant Enjoyment determined situational interest. Exploration and Novelty had positive influences on situational interest via enhancing Instant Enjoyment. Challenge showed little influence. The path analyses for both samples confirmed the inter-dimensional mediation effects of the sources. CONCLUSION: The analysed data support the hypotheses. The dimensional sources had unequal influences on situational interest and the mediation effects among themselves at times strengthened or weakened each other's influences. The findings suggest that to increase situational interest, educators should offer students ample exploratory opportunities during student-task interaction that can lead to instant enjoyment for learning.

Situational interest in physical education: a function of learning task design.

Situational interest is the appealing effect of unique characteristics students recognize in a learning task during interaction with the task. It occurs when a learning task gives the learner a sense of novelty and challenge, demands high attention and exploration intention, and generates instant enjoyment during the person-task interaction. In this study, a repeated measure research design was used to examine the effects of task design on situational interest and the extent to which the effects were mediated by gender, grade, personal interest, and skill levels. Middle school students (N = 242) evaluated situational interest of four learning tasks with different cognitive and physical demands after having experienced the tasks in their physical education classes. Analyzed data showed that cognitive demand of a learning task played a critical role in generating situational interest. Grade levels, gender, and personal interest mediated the effects of task design on situational interest. But these mediation effects seemed rather limited. Physical skill levels had little influence on the effects of task design on situational interest. The findings seem to suggest that to enhance interestingness of a physical activity task, an option for physical educators may be to increase cognitive demand rather than reduce physical demand.

Instructor pilot teaching behavior and student pilot stress in flight training.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between instructor pilot behavior and student pilot stress. Six instructor pilots and 12 undergraduate pilot training students served as subjects. Two students were assigned to each instructor. Ten categories of instructor pilot behavior were coded from audio cassette tapes made during four sorties from the initial instrument phase of undergraduate pilot training in the T-50 Instrument Flight Simulator. Behaviors were tallied and converted to a rate per minute; inter-recorder agreement was 87%. Instructors who relied heavily on acceptance and praise behaviors were placed in a positive group (N = 4), while those relying on criticism and scolding were placed in a negative group (N = 2). Student stress was estimated from timed urine samples used to quantify catecholamine excretion. Results indicated that missions in the T-50 Instrument Flight Simulator produced a significant stress response in the subjects and that the stress response was greater in lessons taught by the instructor pilots in the negative group.

Catecholamine excretion in A-10 pilots.

Catecholamine excretion was determined for 15 USAF pilots during surface attack training in the A-10 aircraft. Timed urine samples were used to determine excretion rates of epinephrine and norepinephrine during basal conditions, during five sorties performed in high-realism simulators, and during six actual flights. Catecholamine excretion was significantly elevated (p < 0.05) over basal rates during all 11 training sorties; therefore, it was concluded that A-10 conversion and surface attack training results in a significant stress response in the subjects. The stress response experienced in the simulator diminished across trials; the stress response from aircraft flights remained steady through all sorties monitored. The relative proportions of epinephrine and norepinephrine remained similar across all but the final sorties in both the simulator and the aircraft. These occasions were typified by increased norepinephrine and decreased epinephrine excretion rates.