The Effects of Task Demand and External Stimuli on Learner's Stress Perception and Job Performance

Abstract

Over the past decades, research in affective learning has begun to take emotions into account, which advocates an education system that is sentient of learner’s cognitive and affective states, as learners’ performance could be affected by emotional factors. This exploratory research examines the impacts of mental arithmetic demand and external stimuli on learner’s stress perception and job performance. External stimuli include time pressure and displays of countdown timer and clock on an online assessment system. Experiments are conducted on five different groups of undergraduate students, with a total of 160 of them from a higher learning institution. The results show that the impacts are significant. Correlations between task demand, external stimuli, learner’s stress and job performance are also significant.