Reader Characteristics, Reading Order, and Facial Emotions Expressed in Reading Science Texts

Emotion plays an important role in online reading and self-regulated learning. It could influence reading processing and even the outcomes through motivation functions. Since previous studies mostly adopted questionnaires to access readers’ emotions, research that applied facial emotion detection non-intrusively during reading process is still limited. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate how readers’ on-going emotions fluctuated under different reading conditions, i.e., with different reader characteristics and reading orders, using a facial emotion analysis system. 21 participants were recruited and presented with four conflicting scientific texts that included positive or negative arguments on genome editing. These participants were divided into the high and low engagements and then were assigned different reading orders of positive-first or negative-first articles. The results showed that participants who read negative-first expressed more sadness and less happiness. Meanwhile, the high engagements showed more anger when reading positive-first, but the low-engagements showed more anger when reading the negative-first. Reading negative-first performed better, but writing performance did not differ according to the group membership or reading order. These findings suggest that (1) the influence of emotions on online reading multiple and conflict science texts and performance is complex; negative activating emotions like sadness and anger could be beneficial to reading performance, while positive activating emotions like happiness could be harmful for reproductive performance. (2) Using facial expression to non-intrusively detect readers’ momentary emotions provides meaningful insights into the fluctuation of emotion during reading science texts. With only six basic emotions, it may not be enough to fully show the motivational transitions in reading process. The interpretation of these facial emotions should be considered beyond their surface meaning.