Colors and Learner’s Gender Evoke Different Emotional and Cognitive Effects in Multimedia Learning

Table 3

Summary of findings for each measure.

	Findings
Positive emotions	The e-learning color tones and learners’ gender did not affect learners’ total positive emotions after the learning engagement. However, the cold color tone elevated lesser positive emotion types than the warm and the achromatic grayscale color tones.
Intrinsic motivation	The female learners reported higher intrinsic motivation than the male learners, irrespective of the e-learning color tones.
Intrinsic load	The e-learning color tones and learners’ gender did not affect learners’ intrinsic cognitive load ratings.
Extraneous load	The warm and the cold color tones led to higher extraneous cognitive load ratings than the achromatic grayscale color tone.
Germane load	The e-learning color tones and learners’ gender did not affect learners’ germane cognitive load ratings.
Retention	The male learners outperformed the female learners on the retention posttest, irrespective of the e-learning color tones.
Transfer	Compared to the cold and the achromatic grayscale color tones, the warm color tone enhanced the male learners’ transfer posttest performance but decreased the female learners’ transfer posttest performance.