How Do Different Levels of AU4 Impact Metacognitive Monitoring During Learning with Intelligent Tutoring Systems?

We investigated how college students’ (n = 40) different levels of action unit 4 (AU4: brow lowerer), metacognitive monitoring process use and pre-test score were associated with metacognitive monitoring accuracy during learning with a hypermedia-based ITS. Results revealed that participants with high pre-test scores had the highest accuracy scores with low levels of AU4 and use of more metacognitive monitoring processes, whereas participants with low pre-test scores had higher accuracy scores with high levels of AU4 and use of more metacognitive monitoring processes. Implications include designing adaptive ITSs that provide different types of scaffolding based on levels of prior knowledge, use of metacognitive monitoring processes, and emotional expressivity keeping in mind that levels of emotions change over time, and therefore must be monitored to provide effective scaffolding during learning.