Ali Derakhshan, Yujong Park
While previous studies have endorsed the potential of adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in several areas of second language (L2) education, their influence on psychological needs of learners in under-resourced contexts has remained uncharted. To address this gap, our study adopted an experimental study to examine if AI adoption could affect learners’ basic psychological needs satisfaction. In doing so, it drew on the Motivation, Engagement and Thriving in User Experience (METUX) model and assigned 218 Iranian under-resourced English as a foreign language (EFL) students into control and experimental groups. A questionnaire measuring basic psychological needs was completed before and after an AI-powered intervention course that lasted a year. The results of repeated measures MANOVA indicated that the use of AI technologies could significantly satisfy EFL students’ psychological needs in terms of all components of METUX, yet in varying effect sizes. The strongest effect was observed in the adoption phase, while the interface component yielded the smallest effect. The study encourages training courses for cultivating AI literacy in under-resourced contexts as a facilitator of psychological need satisfaction in the age of AI-mediated education.