John Sweller | PubMed Health

PubMed2005

Interactions among the imagination, expertise reversal, and element interactivity effects.

Interactions among the imagination, expertise reversal, and element interactivity effects were investigated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, less knowledgeable primary school students learning to use a bus timetable produced better performance under study than imagination conditions, but an increase in their experience reversed the result, producing the imagination effect. Experiment 2, in which students were taught to use a temperature line graph, replicated these results and demonstrated that the effects were more likely to be obtained using complex material. It was concluded that learners can engage more successfully in imagination procedures when learning has proceeded sufficiently to permit the information to be processed in working memory and that working memory limitations are of little consequence except when dealing with complex information.

Cognition↗

PubMed2004

When redundant on-screen text in multimedia technical instruction can interfere with learning.

It is frequently assumed that presenting the same material in written and spoken form benefits learning and understanding. The present work provides a theoretical justification based on cognitive load theory, and empirical evidence based on controlled experiments, that this assumption can be incorrect. From a theoretical perspective, it is suggested that if learners are required to coordinate and simultaneously process redundant material such as written and spoken text, an excessive working memory load is generated. Three experiments involving a group of 25 technical apprentices compared the effects of simultaneously presenting the same written and auditory textual information as opposed to either temporally separating the two modes or eliminating one of the modes. The first two experiments demonstrated that nonconcurrent presentation of auditory and visual explanations of a diagram proved superior, in terms of ratings of mental load and test scores, to a concurrent presentation of the same explanations when instruction time was constrained. The 3rd experiment demonstrated that a concurrent presentation of identical auditory and visual technical text (without the presence of diagrams) was significantly less efficient in comparison with an auditory-only text. Actual or potential applications of this research include the design and evaluation of multimedia instructional systems and audiovisual displays.

Adolescent↗