The Role of Instructor&#x02019;s Social Cues in Video Learning

Wang Fuxing; Qiao Peihua; Kuang Ziyi

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20250212

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2025, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (2) : 393-405. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20250212

Developmental & Educational Psychology

The Role of Instructor’s Social Cues in Video Learning

Wang Fuxing^1,2, Qiao Peihua^1,2, Kuang Ziyi³

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Abstract

Web-based and computer-assisted video learning is prevalent in college students and middle school students at present. However, there are still some issues that researchers are concerned about. Do we still need to present the image of the teacher in video learning? What characteristics of the teacher's image will affect video learning? This article reviewed the recent empirical studies on video learning in educational psychology, and explored the role of instructor in instructional video on learners’ learning performance and subjective feelings in the learning process from the aspects of eye gaze, gesture facial expression, and voice of the instructor. This review can help to explore what are the underlying factors that promote learning effectiveness in video learning.
The review found that, eye gaze may promote learning by guiding attention direction and promoting parasocial interaction. This study summarized the findings of previous studies and found that both guided gaze and direct gaze by instructors can improve learners'learning outcomes. In addition, the gestures exhibited by onscreen instructors mainly include iconic gestures, metaphoric gestures, deictic gestures, and beat gestures. Instructors’ gestures in the instructional video can not only guide learners’ attention to key learning contents, but also provide meaningful visual information for learners, promoting deeper cognitive processing of learners. We found that instructors'deictic gestures and iconic gestures can improve learners'learning outcomes. However, previous studies mainly focused on the instructors'positive facial expression influence on learning. Most studies have found the instructors'positive facial expression to improve the learners'perceived positive emotion, and improve the learning outcomes. Finally, both computer synthetic voice and human voice can facilitate video learning. It should be noted that whether using real human voice or computer synthetic voice, standard Mandarin should be adopted to avoid the confusion caused by accent to learners. At the same time, teachers should use the first-person and second-person speech styles to enhance learners'sense of involvement and participation, and try to use standard pronunciation.
Based on the conclusions of previous studies, this study also summarized the theoretical explanation of the influence of social cues on learning. Social cues may foster social bonds or direct attention. As for the foster social bonds, the theoretical explanation of instructor social cues influencing learning can be explained through social agency theory (SAT) and parasocial interaction (PSI) theory. Both SAT and PSI emphasize the positive effect of social cues on learning. The theory of PSI covers the influence of cognition, emotion, and behavior on learning, which posits that higher parasocial interaction promotes students’ responses to an instructor in a video, thereby improving students'learning outcomes. SAT also propose the instructional process of instructors in video-based learning as a social event. SAT suggests that the social responses or social cues (e.g., gestures, eye gaze) provided by human instructors during the learning process can trigger learners'cognitive schema of responding to people and activate deep cognitive processing strategies, thereby enhancing learners'transfer performance. As for the direct attention, the signaling principle provides an alternative explanation for how social cues facilitate learning. This principle suggests that cues serve to direct learners'attention to learning materials, which enables students to more rapidly select and process key information, thereby enhancing their learning performance.
In conclusion, we suggest that instructors use eye gaze (guided gaze and direct gaze), gesture (deictic gesture and iconic gesture), positive facial expressions, and first-person speech in video instruction to help learners focus their attention, better understand the content of teachers'verbal explanations, and enhance the interaction between teachers and students. Future studies need to further explore the mechanism of social cues effects in video learning, improve the theoretical hypothesis of social cues, disentangle the key factors of social cues, and explore the interaction effects of different social cues.

Key words

video learning / social cues / teacher image / eye gaze / gestures

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Wang Fuxing, Qiao Peihua, Kuang Ziyi. The Role of Instructor’s Social Cues in Video Learning[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2025, 48(2): 393-405 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20250212

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