the exam. The use of self-report measures is also problematic when linking af-
fect to strategy use in that some of the shared variance may be due to the
common methodology (self-report) rather than a relation between affect and
strategy use (Winne & Perry, 2000). Finally, similar to social psychology re-
search, our studies were conducted with college students for a relatively short
time period (approximately 30–45 minutes). However, unlike the social psy-
chology research, our work examines students’ learning of an important con-
cept taught in schools, that of Newtonian physics. Given the scarcity of re-
search linking affect to cognitive processing in academic domains, it seems
worthwhile to examine the findings in light of the different theoretical ap-
proaches despite the aforementioned limitations.
We begin by considering whether our findings are consistent with the
cognitive processing theories of affect and cognition and then consider how
the relation between affect and storage of information might play out in a
conceptual change context. The first cognitive processing theory we con-
sider is Bless’ (2000) mood-and-general-knowledge theory. Overall, the re-
sults are not entirely in line with what might be expected based on Bless’
model. Bless (2000) suggested that under a positive mood, a person would
use heuristic processing unless she detects a difference between the informa-
tion being taken in and her general schema. In this specific instance, the per-
son would then attend to the new information making it more likely that a
change in the general schema based on the new information would occur be-
cause the general schema is already activated and the person is attending to
the difference between the new information and the existing schema. This
activation of the prior schema coupled with attention to new information
should facilitate conceptual change. However, our empirical results do not
provide evidence to support this claim.
Nevertheless, there is some support for Bless’ (2000) theory in terms of
cognitive strategy use and positive affect. Our results for elaborative strategy
use suggest that students with positive affect are broadening their perspec-
tive, which is also in line with Bless’ theory. In addition, the positive relation
between positive affect and metacognitive strategy use for study 2 supports
Bless’ idea that positive affect does not signal a lack of motivation, as was
suggested by earlier theories (e.g., affect-as-information). Rather, students
with positive affect seem to be willing to engage in effortful strategies; they re-
port actively planning, monitoring, and evaluating their understanding of the
reading and also report experiencing positive affect. The relation of positive
affect to strategy use but not conceptual change suggests that affect plays a
role in motivated processing. Positive affect may enhance students’ willing-
ness to persist and engage in a task, which may lead to the use of higher levels
strategies. It is unclear, however, why positive affect did not enhance concep-
tual change when it was associated with higher-level strategies, as one would
70 LINNENBRINK AND PINTRICH