Affective pedagogical agent (PA) is an image of a character embedded in multimedia lessons with the ability to influence learners' affective experiences and learning performance. Prior studies on the effects of affective PA have shown inconsistent findings. In this study, we conducted four separate meta-analyses to address whether adding an affective PA to multimedia lessons can increase learners' retention performance, transfer performance, positive emotions, and intrinsic motivation, and to explore several moderators that may have contributed to the inconsistencies of previous studies. The research framework mainly includes introducing the concept of affective PA, reviewing research on the impact of affective PA on learning performance, emotions, and motivation, analyzing the moderators that may affect the effects of affective PA, performing a meta-analysis, and discussing the results based on the findings of the meta-analysis. We found 36 articles met the inclusion criteria. The results of the meta-analysis indicated that affective PA could increase learners’ positive emotions (k = 25, g = 0.26), improve intrinsic motivation (k = 26, g = 0.26), and facilitate learning performance (retention: k = 35, g = 0.26; transfer: k = 45, g = 0.34). Furthermore, moderator analysis found that affective PA characteristics (i.e., appearance, the number of emotional cues, and body movement) and learning materials characteristics (i.e., subject domain, pacing of presentation) moderated the effects of affective PA. We discussed these findings from different theoretical perspectives. In general, affective PA could help students be happier and more motivated to learn in multimedia learning environments.

情感教学代理 (PA) 是嵌入多媒体课程的角色形象，能够影响学习者的情感体验和学习表现。先前关于情感 PA 影响的研究显示出不一致的结果。在这项研究中，我们进行了四项独立的元分析，以解决在多媒体课程中添加情感 PA 是否可以提高学习者的保留表现、迁移表现、积极情绪和内在动机，并探索可能导致不一致的几种调节因素以前的研究。研究框架主要包括引入情感PA的概念，回顾情感PA对学习成绩、情绪和动机影响的研究，分析可能影响情感PA效果的调节因素，进行荟萃分析，并根据荟萃分析的结果讨论结果。我们发现 36 篇文章符合纳入标准。荟萃分析的结果表明，情感PA可以增加学习者的积极情绪（k  = 25，g  = 0.26），提高内在动机（k  = 26，g  = 0.26），促进学习表现（保留：k  = 35，g  = 0.26；迁移：k  = 45，g  = 0.34）。此外，调节者分析发现情感 PA 特征（即外观、情绪线索的数量和身体运动）和学习材料特征（即主题领域、演示节奏）调节情感 PA 的影响。我们从不同的理论角度讨论了这些发现。一般来说，情感 PA 可以帮助学生在多媒体学习环境中更快乐、更有动力地学习。