encoded during storage of information when heuristic or substantive process-
ing is used. It seems likely that conceptual change may involve substantive
processing; that is, a student who is undergoing conceptual change is likely to
be processing information from a novel or new task (designed to initiate con-
ceptual change) and will therefore be building and constructing new knowl-
edge, as well as linking this to or altering prior knowledge. Forgas (2002a) ar-
gued that when new knowledge is constructed, it is more likely that a mood
state would be encoded along with the relevant information. Therefore, a
congruency between the mood state of encoding and one’s current mood
state should facilitate retrieval.
Overall, for conceptual change in science understanding, it is likely that af-
fect plays a role both in encoding and retrieval of information as well as the
way in which information is processed. For encoding and retrieval, a match
between encoding state and retrieval state should facilitate retrieval as new
knowledge is constructed and may thus include an affective component
(Forgas, 2000a). In terms of processing information, it seems that a positive
mood may facilitate conceptual change in that students may be more likely to
try to alter their schemas when they are not successful in applying them
(Bless, 2000) and because positive affect promotes broad, heuristic processing
(Bless, 2000; Fredrickson, 2001), which may facilitate the learning of larger
concepts as opposed to small, unconnected, discrete facts or pieces of infor-
mation. However, it also seems plausible that the tendency to rely on prior
knowledge when in a positive mood (Fiedler, 2000) may hinder the concep-
tual change process as new information may be interpreted based on existing
knowledge structures. For negative affect, the picture is also unclear. For in-
stance, negative affect may interfere with the conceptual change process by
focusing students on the details of the task (Bless, 2000). However, it also
seems plausible that negative affect may enhance conceptual change by stim-
ulating accommodation rather than assimilation (Fiedler, 2000). It is clear
that additional research on the way in which affect influences conceptual
change is needed.
Affect and Learning Mathematics
In this section, we focus on learning mathematics, as this represents a some-
what different process than conceptual change in science understanding. In
particular, we review findings from our laboratory on the links between gen-
eral affect and learning mathematics for upper elementary and middle school
students (e.g., Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003). We also discuss a number of
studies that link affect to mathematics understanding and problem solving
from the extant literature. Finally, in addition to considering the way that af-
fect is linked to the processing of information for mathematics learning, we
also consider how affect is linked to memory processes.
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