Framed within Social Interdependence Theory, this study investigated how learner factors (interaction mindsets and task perceptions) relate to learner engagement, task completion, and lexical learning. One hundred and five L2 learners of English completed an interaction-mindsets questionnaire and a lexical pre-test, performed two interactive tasks (i.e., collaborative spatial planning task vs. asymmetric visual comparison task), completed an engagement questionnaire, and participated in a post-test and a debriefing. Learner interactions were coded for engagement (semantically engaged talk, responsiveness, LREs), while survey and interview data were analyzed using inferential statistics and thematic analysis. Our results showed that interaction mindsets predicted various dimensions of engagement (i.e., cognitive, social, and emotional) and lexical learning. Most learners viewed tasks positively despite their differing foci. Follow-up tests revealed the impact of task type on engagement, which in turn predicted task completion. The results evidence links between learner factors, engagement, and learning outcomes, which highlights the need to foster positive interaction mindsets and task perceptions to enhance engagement and learning.

We conduct an experiment where participants make choices between completing a task now or waiting to complete it in the future. We vary the dates when a task can be completed and the effort required at each date. We infer participants’ preferences for when to complete a task and their expectations about how their future preferences will differ from their current ones. Our findings indicate that most participants prefer to complete tasks immediately, even if it demands more effort than waiting. Their choices generally align with the principles of time consistency, monotonicity, and time invariance. We show that quasi-hyperbolic discounting, anticipatory utility, fixed costs, decision costs, and cost-of-keeping-track are all unable to provide a reasonable account of both our findings and related experiments.