Abstract
In two experiments, we compared effects of instructions that encourage learners to create referential connections between words and pictures with instructions that distract learners from creating referential connections. In Experiment 1, students read a scientific text under four conditions. In the text-picture condition, students read the illustrated text without strategy instructions. In the integration condition, students identified important concepts and wrote them right by the corresponding components of the pictures. In the separation condition students identified important concepts and wrote them beside the corresponding picture. A control group read the text without illustrations. Transfer and comprehension performance in the text-picture group was higher than in the text-only group. Furthermore, the text-picture and integration groups performed better than the separation group. In Experiment 2, the main results were replicated using a summary strategy instead of the important concepts strategy. Results indicate specific effects of strategy instructions on learning from text and pictures and are discussed in the context of multimedia learning theories.
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Notes
Despite the missing values the scores on the referential connections test were significantly correlated—similar to Experiment 1—with performance on the comprehension test, r = .50, p = .007 (n = 28), and with performance on the transfer test, r = .48, p = .012 (n = 27).
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Experiment 2 was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation to the first author.
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Leopold, C., Doerner, M., Leutner, D. et al. Effects of strategy instructions on learning from text and pictures. Instr Sci 43, 345–364 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-014-9336-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-014-9336-3