Towards Integrating Emotion Management Strategies in Intelligent Tutoring System Used by Children

Computerised learning much like classic learning is subject to a host of adverse emotions such as boredom, frustration and anxiety. These emotions can cause serious negative impacts on memory and attention, which in turn affect learning achievement. Thus, many researchers strongly agree that intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) would significantly improve performance if they can adapt to the affective state (emotional state) of the learners. This idea has spawned an important trend in the development of ITSs, which are systems with the ability to regulate a learner's adverse emotions. In the present study, we review six dominant researches that have implemented different emotion management strategies such as coping strategies and emotion regulation strategies in an intelligent tutoring system. Then, we concisely discuss the results of the best practice that applies emotion regulation strategies to schoolchildren, without using an ITS. The results show that applying emotion management strategies during computerised or non-computerised learning produces more optimistic emotions as well as better learning gain.