It has been widely recognized in educational research that, if addressed appropriately, errors can promote learning. Adaptive reactions to errors—including affective-motivational and action-related reactions—have been proposed to capture such adequate adjustments of affect and behavior to regulate learning processes. However, prior research addressing reactions to errors has left primary school students underrepresented. At the same time, findings from assessments beyond self-reported data are still sparse. Therefore, we multimodally assessed adaptive reactions to errors in an authentic learning situation within a digital mathematics learning environment. In a sample of 284 third-grade students, we found a positive relation between self-reported adaptive affective-motivational reactions to errors, as well as the corresponding behavioral indicator, and knowledge acquisition. For action-related reactions to errors, only the behavioral indicator was related to knowledge acquisition. These results highlight the relevance of adaptive reactions to error for primary school students while emphasizing the necessity of multimodal assessment. The results show that adaptive reactions to errors, including adaptive affective-motivational and action-related reactions to errors, positively relate to knowledge acquisition in primary school students. To fully understand their impact, multimodal assessment appears to be necessary. Therefore, teachers should take students' reports and behaviors into account while adopting a constructive approach to addressing errors in their classrooms. • Multimodal assessment of adaptive reactions to errors • Automatic facial expression analysis as behavioral indicator for emotion regulation • Field study in an authentic learning situation with primary school students • Adaptive reactions to errors are relevant for knowledge acquisition • Multimodal assessment is particularly relevant in younger students
Pickal et al. (2026) studied this question.