Role of the Instructor’s Social Cues in Instructional Videos

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Congratulations on a well-executed study that makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of social cues in instructional video design. Your systematic testing of all five links in the positivity principle—from perceived emotion through to learning outcomes—combined with rigorous eye-tracking methodology, provides important empirical evidence that advances both theory and practice in multimedia learning. The manuscript is clearly written, well-organized, and methodologically sound, with particularly strong experimental design and data presentation. Your work addresses a timely question in educational technology and offers practical insights for the growing field of video-based instruction.

This manuscript demonstrates several notable strengths. First, the study provides a comprehensive test of all five links in the positivity principle, tracing the complete chain from perceived instructor emotion through felt emotion, motivation, visual attention, and ultimately to learning outcomes. This level of thoroughness is relatively rare in the literature and represents an important contribution. Second, the experimental design is robust, employing a well-justified mixed 2×2 design with appropriate statistical analyses and consistent effect size reporting that enables readers to assess both statistical and practical significance. Third, the use of eye-tracking technology to objectively measure visual attention is a particular methodological strength, moving beyond self-report measures to capture actual cognitive processing. Fourth, the hypothesis-driven structure makes the manuscript clear and easy to follow, with each research question logically building on the theoretical framework. Fifth, the data presentation is exemplary—the well-designed tables and figures (particularly Figures 3-5) effectively communicate complex interaction effects through clear visualizations with appropriate error bars and significance markers. Finally, you demonstrate scholarly integrity through honest and thoughtful acknowledgment of limitations, particularly regarding the all-female sample and implications for generalizability, which strengthens rather than weakens the overall contribution.

Minor Revision Suggestions:

1. Sample description: Please note the all-female sample restriction more prominently in the abstract (not just the Method section), as this is important for readers assessing generalizability.
2. Methodological details: Expand the description of how vocabulary word difficulty was equated across happy/bored conditions, and clarify the counterbalancing procedures used in your within-subjects design.
3. Arrow vs. Hand pointing discussion: Your finding that arrow pointing outperformed hand pointing is theoretically interesting and somewhat unexpected. This deserves more thorough discussion, including elaboration on what made arrow pointing "more precisely embedded" and the implications for the embodiment principle.
4. Practical implications: Consider expanding this section with more concrete, actionable recommendations for instructors and instructional designers creating video lectures.
5. Prior knowledge: You mention administering a prior knowledge test but don't report the results. Please include this data and clarify whether groups differed on this variable.
6. Minor corrections:
   • Page 2: "Emauthorrical" should be "Empirical"
   • Page 10: Same error in "Emauthorrical Contributions"
   • Verify Figure numbering consistency (text references Figure 2 on page 3, but figure is labeled Figure 1)
     • I think that this sentence should end in Figure 1.: "This project provides a systematic test of the positivity principle, which posits that positive social cues in a multimedia lesson set off a chain of events in the learner as summarized in Figure 2."  

Your work advances our understanding of affective factors in multimedia learning and has clear implications for the growing field of video-based instruction. With minor revisions, this will be an excellent contribution to Education Sciences.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript addresses an important and timely question in multimedia learning: how instructors’ social cues (facial expression and pointing) influence affect, attention, and learning outcomes in instructional video. The study is theoretically grounded, methodologically competent, and empirically rich. However, some claims are overstated and need clarification.

Overall Strengths

• The manuscript provides a systematic test of the positivity principle, explicitly operationalizing all five proposed links (perceived emotion → felt emotion → motivation → attention → learning).

• The use of eye-tracking data meaningfully strengthens claims about attentional mechanisms.

• The mixed within/between-subjects design is appropriate and well-executed.

• The finding that arrow pointing outperforms hand pointing is a useful and non-obvious contribution that complicates simplistic interpretations of embodiment.

• Generally, the manuscript is clear and well-organized. Hypotheses are explicitly stated and systematically tested.

Concerns

• The manuscript relies heavily on self-citation and closely related author networks, which risks insularity. In particular, it seems like alternative explanations like arousal, novelty effects, and expectancy violations are only acknowledged indirectly. The literature review could be greatly strengthened by drawing on a wider range of existing literature to complement and contrast the author's own prior work.

• All participants are female, from a single institution, and learning English vocabulary. While the manuscript rightly acknowledges this as a limitation and appropriately discusses why this is a concern for generalizability, the discussion and conclusions are broadly stated, risking overgeneralization, given this limitation. For example, in the conclusion, the manuscript states, "When the onscreen instructor displays happy rather than bored facial expression, learners recognize the instructor as more positive..." I don't think this claim is justified given the current study's limitations. Instead, the manuscript should make more modest claims grounded in the study design and findings. For example: "When the onscreen instructor displays happy rather than bored facial expression in short Chinese english language learning videos, female learners recognize the instructor as more positive..."

• I am confused by the reporting on the perceived emotion and felt emotion constructs and would benefit from additional clarification. In the Methods, these constructs are described as distinct and each assessed using a single item, yet a single internal consistency estimate is reported (α = .60). If these are intended to function as single-item measures, it would be more appropriate to omit internal consistency reporting and instead acknowledge the limitations inherent in single-item assessments. Alternatively, if the authors conceptualize perceived and felt emotion as indicators of a broader affective construct, this rationale should be made more explicit. In that case, the relatively modest alpha suggests that the two items may capture related but not fully overlapping aspects of emotion, which would warrant further discussion.

• Numerous typographical and copyediting errors (e.g., “emauthorrical,” inconsistent spacing, minor grammatical issues).

• Occasional redundancy in explaining the positivity principle and the study design.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf