Freedom of Choice: The Effect of Self-Selection Learning on Children’s Engagement

Recent studies have shown that self-selection learning can have distinct benefits, such as enhancing category learning (Castro et al., 2008). To investigate the effect of self-selection on children’s level of engagement, which is thought to underlie self-selection learning benefits, we measured heart rate changes (cognitive engagement) and facial emotional reactions (emotional engagement) of 8-12 year olds when receiving observational feedback in a categorization task. In the self-selection condition, stimuli could be constructed, whereas stimuli were randomly presented in the reception condition. Although the task appeared to be very easy for all participants, self-selection did induce some enhanced category learning. Our findings concerning the effect of self-selection on engagement in the first two blocks, that did not show accuracy differences, were mixed, with cognitive engagement being higher in the reception condition and emotional engagement being higher in the self-selection condition. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to possible long-term benefits of active learning through enhancing engagement.