The role of cultural background in the personalization principle: Five experiments with Czech learners

Composing instructional texts in multimedia learning materials in a conversational style rather than a formal style can facilitate learning. We investigated whether a specific language/cultural background could present a boundary condition for this effect. In four experiments with a Czech sample (N = 278), we replicated a seminal experiment conducted on a US sample (with a short animation on the topic of lightning formation), which demonstrated a large effect size in favor of the instructional texts in the conversational style. In our four experiments, we varied between two types of audiences (a college and a high school audience) and two types of short animations (the original one and a complementary one). Instructional texts in a conversational style brought no overall advantage for the Czech audience (ηp2 = .00; the high school audience: d = 0.48, 0.22; the college audience: d = −0.45, −0.04). Twenty-nine percent of participants who received the conversational instructional texts expressed explicit reservations regarding the style of the language. In the fifth supplementary experiment, Czech participants (N = 138) had to rate preferences on computer tutor's printed statements. Direct rather than polite statements were preferred. Limited benefits of conversational/polite instructional texts for Czech learners are probably related to the generally more formal approach to education in the Czech Republic compared to the US schooling system. We also failed to find a link between several affective variables and learning outcomes; with the exception of a relationship of generalized positive affect, levels of flow and perceived difficulty to some of the learning outcomes.