This study investigates whether integrating emotional facial stimuli into cognitive training tasks can activate facial mimicry and enhance motivation. We developed a reaction-based cognitive task presenting dynamic facial expressions of happiness and anger, and evaluated participants’ facial action units (AUs), mood, and motivation using ARCS-based measures. Forty adults completed two experimental conditions: a single-task setting and a multitask setting combining the facial reaction task with a tracking task. Results showed that in the single-task condition, happiness stimuli significantly increased AU12 activation and improved positive mood and motivation scores compared to anger stimuli. In the multitask condition, only the Attention factor showed a significant improvement for happiness stimuli, whereas other indicators did not differ significantly across conditions. Facial mimicry and motivational changes were thus observed, but their magnitude varied across indicators and diminished under increased cognitive load. These results suggest that positive facial expressions embedded within cognitive tasks may influence affective and motivational responses, particularly when cognitive load is low, although the effects are limited and factor-dependent. This study provides preliminary implications for the design of emotionally supportive cognitive training tasks.
