Effects of AI Chatbot-Led Versus Preservice Teacher-Led Interactive Reading on Engagement Trajectories and Training Outcomes

This study examines the effects of AI chatbot-led versus preservice teacher-led interactive reading on engagement trajectories and training outcomes over 11 days. The participants included 39 primary school students in the AI chatbot-led group and 39 in the preservice teacher-led group. Both training groups produced similar trajectories of improvement in immediate reading performance. Group differences over sessions were found in attentional engagement, with AI chatbot-led sessions eliciting greater information attention and less social attention. The two training groups exhibited distinct temporal engagement trajectories in positive emotion and verbal response relevance. The slopes of social attention and positive emotion engagements had impacts on post-training reading comprehension and oral narrative outcomes respectively, with the effect of the slope of social attention varying between the AI chatbot-led and preservice teacher-led conditions. Educational approaches may be optimized by combining AI-led and human-led methods to leverage their respective strengths for reading or language training in reading or language training.