Data from: Building a responsive teacher: how temporal contingency of gaze interaction influences word learning with virtual tutors

Animated pedagogical agents are lifelike virtual characters designed to augment learning. A review of developmental psychology literature led to the hypothesis that the temporal contingency of such agents would promote human learning. We developed the Pedagogical Agent with Gaze Interaction (PAGI), an experimental animated pedagogical agent that engages in gaze interaction with students. In this study, university students learned words of a foreign language, with temporally contingent PAGI (live group) or recorded version of PAGI (recorded group), which played pre-recorded sequences from live sessions. The result revealed that students in the live group scored considerably better than those in the recorded group. The finding indicates that incorporating temporal contingency of gaze interaction from a pedagogical agent has a positive effect on learning, and should be considered when designing animated pedagogical agents.动画式教学智能体（Animated Pedagogical Agent）是一类为辅助学习而设计的拟真虚拟角色。通过梳理发展心理学领域的相关文献，我们提出研究假设：此类智能体的交互时序匹配性能够促进人类学习。为此，我们研发了带眼神交互的教学智能体（Pedagogical Agent with Gaze Interaction，PAGI）——一款可与学生开展眼神交互的实验性动画教学智能体。本研究中，大学生通过两类PAGI完成外语单词学习任务：一组使用时序匹配版PAGI（实时组），另一组使用PAGI的录制版本（录制组），后者播放的是从实时交互会话中提取的预录制片段。研究结果显示，实时组学生的测试成绩显著优于录制组学生。本研究表明，在动画教学智能体中融入眼神交互的时序匹配机制可对学习效果产生积极影响，因此在设计动画教学智能体时应将该机制纳入考量范围。