The nature of interest and its influence on learning is an ancient and brand-new topic, and it is the core problem to be solved in educational theory and practice. Herbart, an educator, regards developing extensive interests as one of the main goals of education, and thinks that interests mainly cause correct and comprehensive understanding of objects, thus leading to meaningful learning, promoting the long-term maintenance of knowledge and providing motivation for further learning. Dewey is also one of the most influential interest theorists. 19 13 published the monograph "Interest and Effort in Education", pointing out that learning based on interest is qualitatively different from learning based only on effort. However, in the west, after the rise of behaviorism and the revolution of cognitive psychology, interest research has not made great progress, and interest also lacks its due position in the theoretical system of educational psychology. In 1980s, western research on the nature of interest and its influence on learning began to revive. At present, this topic has become one of the core issues in educational psychology research, which has attracted the attention and research of many psychological researchers.

1. Development of interest concept research

In contemporary western interest research, there are three different interest concepts, namely, individual interest, situational interest and interest as a psychological state (Pintrich et al., 1996). Personal interests are caused by personal tendencies. Generally speaking, researchers regard it as a developing psychological feature, and think that personal interest is relatively stable, which is often associated with the growth of knowledge, positive emotions and the increase of value. For example, Schiffler (1992) thinks that personal interest can be interpreted as a relatively long time for individuals to face a certain object, activity or a certain knowledge field. Situational interest is an interest generated by certain conditions and stimuli in the current environment, which often has only short-term effects and marginal effects on individual knowledge and reference system. But situational interest may also have a more lasting effect and become the basis of personal interest. Situational interest can develop into relatively lasting personal interest under certain conditions. It can be seen that these two interests are not independent dichotomy, but interact with each other in development. Interest, as a psychological state, reflects a view on the interaction and correlation of interests, which holds that interest is a psychological state produced by the interaction between individual interests and interesting environmental characteristics.

This is largely related to their research problems. In the systematic analysis of the literature, we find that in contemporary western interest research, most researchers separate personal interest as a personality feature from material interest as a learning environment feature, and do not pay attention to interest as a psychological state of people. It is the result of the interaction between individuals and specific stimulus materials in specific research situations. Although some researchers have noticed the interaction and influence between personal interest and situational interest, there is still a lack of in-depth theoretical discussion on the psychological process of this interaction and the psychological mechanism of various factors affecting interest. In the existing interest research, there is not enough research on real interest, that is, interest is regarded as a psychological state in the interaction between individuals and environmental stimuli. In fact, personality factors and the characteristics of learning materials are only necessary conditions for interest. Without the specific interaction between individuals and the environment under specific conditions, it is not enough to study the role of a certain influencing factor. We believe that this research idea is not conducive to the establishment of the unified interest theory, nor to improving the ecological validity of the research. Reveal the psychological essence of interest comprehensively and completely? This is obviously an important work of interest research in the next step.

2. The influence of interest on academic performance

Some western researchers have studied the influence of personal interest and situational interest on academic performance respectively. These studies are mainly carried out by using related methods. With regard to the influence of personal interest on students' academic performance, Schiefele et al. (1992) made a meta-analysis of a series of research results, and the results showed that the correlation between interest and academic performance was close to 30%. However, this relationship is also related to gender, subject and grade, and the relationship between senior interest and academic performance is stronger. This result is consistent with the research results of the National Primary School Students' Mathematical Ability Cooperation Group (1989, 1990). The research of "China Primary School Students' Mathematical Ability Cooperation Group" shows that the interest, attitude and ambition of fourth and sixth grade primary school students in learning mathematics have a very significant relationship with their achievements in the corresponding mathematical ability test; With the increase of grade, these three non-intelligence factors are more closely related to the development of primary school students' mathematical ability, and their functions have also increased. Among them, the role of interest in learning mathematics jumped from the third place in grade four to 1 place in grade six. Regarding the influence of situational interest on academic performance, some researchers have suggested that interested classroom teaching and learning materials have great influence on academic performance.

3. The role of interest in text comprehension

On the relationship between interest and learning, the well-studied topic is the influence of interest on text understanding, which is an important aspect of interest affecting learning. Corresponding to the above three concepts of interest, there are three ways to study this topic: the first way is to take interest as a variable of personality tendency or similar characteristics and investigate the influence of topic interest on the maintenance and understanding of the text; The second method is to take interest as a feature of learning materials and investigate the role of text-based interest in text understanding. The third way is to regard interest as a realistic psychological state in specific activities and study the role of interest in text understanding. Generally speaking, these studies support the conclusion that interest has a positive effect on text comprehension, and this effect will not change qualitatively because of the age of the subjects, the type of text (narrative and explanatory), the way of text presentation (written and oral) and the types of comprehension tests (free prompt recall, cloze, multiple choice and question answer).

Specifically, the study found that the role of interest in text understanding is mainly manifested in the following three aspects:

(1) Interest will promote readers to adopt the strategy of deep processing when reading the text, establish more connections with what they read, and think more independently about it. Readers with high interest will show stronger reasoning ability for what they read.

A study by Fransson( 1977) shows that students who are more interested in a topic show deep processing of the text. Using free memory and extensive conversations, he found that subjects with high interest not only formed more connections between different parts of the text, but also formed more connections between what they read and their previous knowledge or personal experience. He also found that subjects with high interest thought more independently about the content of the text. Zhang Kai and Zhang Biyin (1996) conducted a study on college students, and found that subjects with high interest made more correct inferences than those with low interest. Schief le( 1992) showed that subjects with high interest showed more meaning-oriented (proposition) processing than subjects with low interest, but less word processing.

(2) Interest has little or no influence on the knowledge clearly contained in the learning text; Interest plays a very important role when it is necessary to deeply understand the text content, and the knowledge acquired by readers with high interest has a higher level of transfer.

Schief le( 1990) divided the text comprehension level into three levels in a study on the influence of topic interest on the text comprehension level, which was expressed by three types of questions, namely simple knowledge questions, complex knowledge questions and deep understanding questions. The results show that interest is a very important condition that affects text comprehension, especially when a deep understanding of text content is required, but it has no effect on answering simple knowledge questions. However, the researchers pointed out that these results can not clearly explain whether the subjects with high interest really gained a deeper understanding. Another explanation is that the differences observed in the study are not produced in the process of text processing, but may be produced in the recall stage. Subjects with low interest may also be able to answer questions with deep understanding, but they don't try to memorize them because of their weak motivation to answer questions. Zhang Kai and Zhang Biyin (1995) also reached the same conclusion. However, based on the overall analysis of interest effect, we deny the above explanation of schief le( 1990), and think that the influence of interest on different comprehension levels occurs in the cognitive processing stage, that is, the construction stage of text schema, rather than the recall stage.

(3) Interest has certain influence on comprehension and monitoring ability in text reading.

Zhang Kai and Zhang Biyin (1996) took college students as subjects to study the influence of interest on reading comprehension monitoring ability. First, let the subjects read an article, then evaluate their interest in what they read and complete the comprehension test. The form of the test is a cloze of the paragraph text with the theme of the article as the content, and the subjects are required to evaluate the correctness of their words. The results show that subjects with high interest think their words are more correct than those with low interest. This shows that the level of interest has a certain influence on the comprehension and monitoring ability in text reading.

De-Sousa and Oakhill( 1996) studied the influence of interest level on comprehension and monitoring ability of 24 children aged 8-9. The reading and vocabulary skills of the two groups are similar, but the comprehension skills are different. They were asked to read a series of short essays and test their comprehension monitoring level. The results show that the level of interest has a significant influence on the scores of comprehension monitoring tests of subjects with poor comprehension skills, but has no influence on the scores of comprehension monitoring tests of subjects with good comprehension skills.

Based on the above research, we think that interest improves the learning process on the one hand, and the learning results on the other hand, thus improving the quality and quantity of learning. As Dewey (19 13) said, there is a qualitative difference between interest-based learning and learning results based only on hard work. Behind this difference is the mechanism of interest affecting learning, and understanding this problem theoretically is a necessary condition for the further development of interest research.

4. The mechanism of interest influencing learning

There are three explanations about the mechanism of interest influencing learning in western interest research: attention and resource allocation hypothesis, cognitive strategy hypothesis and motivation orientation hypothesis.

The hypothesis of attention and resource allocation was first put forward by Anderson( 1982). Anderson (1982) and Shirley &; The research directed by Reynolds (1988) explained the interest effect, and they assumed that more attention was paid to the sentences of interest. Anderson et al. (1984) assume that readers pay more attention to interesting text fragments and concentrate for longer. However, their research results do not show that better memory of interesting sentences is based on (consciously) increasing attention. The theoretical assumptions of Anderson and others are also challenged by Hidi( 1990). Hidi( 1990) questioned the hypothesis that attention will inevitably lead to longer reading and reaction time. According to some empirical studies, she thinks that attention has automatic attention and selective attention, and automatic attention is related to the learning process of interest, rather than selective and conscious attention. In interest learning, automatic attention can release cognitive energy, which is beneficial to produce more consistent representations and improve learning level.

Entwistle and Ramden( 1983) distinguish between deep processing strategy and surface strategy. Schief le( 1989) thinks that the learning of interest orientation corresponds to deep processing orientation, so the representations constructed by high-interest subjects are better than those constructed by low-interest subjects in nature, and then the basic components of the learned content can be recalled.

Dweck and his colleagues distinguish different motivation orientations according to the types of achievement goals: mastery orientation and performance orientation. According to this theory, interest is related to mastery orientation, so different and innovative knowledge structures can be produced.

In addition, emotional psychology is also very concerned about the relationship between interest and learning. There is a view that the interaction between interest and happiness constitutes the best emotional background for intellectual activities. Happiness keeps interest at a low threshold; The tension of interest is released when it is transformed into pleasure. The alternation of the two can not only avoid the tension of interests for too long, but also avoid too much happiness and relaxation.

The above four viewpoints are supported by experimental evidence, but they all involve only one aspect and lack the overall understanding of the interest mechanism. Both the attention and resource allocation hypothesis and the cognitive strategy hypothesis try to explain the mechanism of interest from a cognitive perspective, but they do not explain why interest is related to automatic attention and deep processing strategies. Therefore, it can only be explained by the intermediary factors of interests. Motivation orientation hypothesis does not explain why interest is related to mastery orientation; The emotional background hypothesis does not link interest with cognitive processing level, so it cannot properly predict and explain the relationship between interest and understanding level. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the interest mechanism.

5. Research on interest effect

In the study of the influence of interest on learning, many researchers do not pay enough attention to the related control variables that affect the interest effect. Most foreign studies focus on school-age children to control reading ability and text comprehensibility, and few studies control the intelligence level and previous knowledge of the subjects. The research shows that the influence of reading ability and text comprehensibility on comprehension has nothing to do with interest, and different studies have obtained consistent results. However, the research on the relationship between transcendental knowledge and interest is not like this, and the research results on transcendental knowledge are inconsistent. Baldwin al (1985) and Entin &; Klare( 1985) suggested that both interest and previous knowledge have significant influence on understanding, but they are independent of each other. The research by Hare and Devine( 1983) shows that only prior knowledge has a significant influence on understanding; Osako and Anders( 1983) found that previous knowledge and topic interest had a weak influence (see Schiefele, 1992).

Schiefele( 1990) controlled the subjects' previous knowledge, intelligence level and short-term memory ability. The analysis of control variables shows that the difference in understanding between high interest group and low interest group cannot be attributed to intelligence, short-term memory ability and previous knowledge; Previous knowledge has no correlation with short-term memory ability and understanding; The indicators of verbal intelligence and general intelligence are only significantly related to simple knowledge problems; Interest and intelligence are independent of each other. In these two experiments, Zhang Kai and Zhang Biyin (1995, 1996) found that the effect of interest on text understanding is relatively independent of the effect of previous knowledge, regardless of whether it is significant or not.

In the above research, the inconsistency of the research results is closely related to the difficulty of the text used by different researchers, the amount of prior knowledge of the subjects and the measurement method of prior knowledge. In these studies, the previous knowledge is used as the control variable of the experiment, and the statistical methods used are mainly partial correlation analysis or covariance analysis. This experimental design is not conducive to a comprehensive study of the relationship between learning interest and previous knowledge.

6. Theoretical research and development

In the past 20 years, in the field of western educational psychology, interest research is moving from recovery to revival. Studying the influence of interest on learning is an important aspect of exploring the relationship between emotion and cognition, which can make up for the fact that cognitive psychology ignores the role of emotional factors in human cognition and only studies the deficiency of cognition, thus attracting the attention of many researchers. This trend should attract the attention of educational psychology researchers in China. Generally speaking, they also have some problems to varying degrees, and we should not blindly follow them. Among them, the most prominent problem is the lack of a mature definition and theory of interests. Most studies do not include the theoretical discussion of interest, and many researchers study the daily meaning of "interest". We don't think this is enough. Without theoretical understanding, experimental research is bound to be blind. For example, most studies lack an overall grasp of the conditions that interest affects cognition, and do not pay attention to the interaction between personality factors and situational factors that affect interest under specific conditions, but completely separate them and ignore the interaction process under specific learning conditions; Many studies have not fully considered the control variables that affect interest and understanding. Although some studies have controlled the level of prior knowledge, the measurement of prior knowledge needs to be improved. Most studies use simple indicators in comprehension tests, especially in the form of multiple choices. The use of these methods is limited to the purely quantitative aspects of learning, ignoring the qualitative or structural indicators of understanding level. This index can't provide any clear information about the structural characteristics of the acquired knowledge, and it doesn't consider distinguishing different levels of understanding, so it can't draw any conclusions about different processing levels. In a word, strengthening the theoretical integration of interest concepts and choosing ecologically effective research methods are two important problems facing interest research at present, and solving them is the direction of further development of interest research.