A multimodal and experimental approach. Im Psychologischen Forschungskolloquium berichten Wissenschaftler*innen der Universität Augsburg und Forscher*innen aus anderen Forschungseinrichtungen über ihre Arbeit.

Errors are an important learning opportunity in educational settings as they provide informative feed-back about misconceptions and knowledge gaps. However, in order to utilise the learning potential lying in errors, students have to engage in affective-motivational as well as action-related regulation following the occurrence of an error. Research regarding such adaptive reactions to errors has identified beliefs about errors to be one of several underlying factors of successfully adapting and regulating the learning process which, in turn, fosters knowledge acquisition. At the same time, prior results are limited by mostly relying on self-reported data and only providing cross-sectional and non-experimental insights. In order to extend these results, we experimentally manipulated the beliefs about errors in an authentic learning situation within a digital learning environment in a sample of 314 primary school students. Further, adaptive reactions to errors were assessed via self-report as well as with two additional measures: a behavioral indicator derived from the adaptation of the learning behaviour following errors and an affective indicator based on emotional reactions to errors captured with videos of the students during the learning process. Results show that the multimodal measures converge and provide a comprehensive understanding of how primary students deal with errors. Further, imparting positive beliefs about errors to students encouraged an adaptive adjustment of the learning process following errors, which allows for the conclusion of a causal influence of beliefs about errors on adaptive reactions to errors. Directions of future research will be discussed.