Explorative and Exploitative Learning Affected by Extraneous Cognitive Load and Gameplay Anxiety in a Gestalt Perception Game

In line with the attention-to-affect model, this study employed a game that encompasses Gestalt perception to explore how extraneous cognitive load (ECL) and gameplay anxiety correlate with attitude towards exploitative learning and attitude towards explorative learning as students play the Visual-Saliency game (VSG) with images of artworks. The data of 56 sixth-grade students were collected and subjected to Smart PLS analysis to verify the pathways. The results of this study show that ECL is negatively related to attitude towards exploitative learning and attitude towards explorative learning. However, gameplay anxiety is negatively related to attitude towards exploitative learning, but is not significantly related to explorative learning when playing the VSG. The implication of this study is that Gestalt perception in game playing can give students more opportunities to practice reasoning, and they can gain more knowledge about the artworks themselves.