Multimedia and comprehension: a cognitive study

Tests were carried out on 120 grade 6 students to compare Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia on CD‐ROM and its printed equivalent in terms of students' ability to recall information and to draw inferences from it. Between‐subject variables were three presentation conditions (printed text with illustrations, text‐on‐screen, and multimedia—text, still images, and animation) and a retrieval condition (topic retrieved before viewing/topic presented without retrieval). Within‐subject variables were text complexity (complex or simple), text type (descriptive or procedural), and measure (propositions recalled versus propositions inferred). Presentation conditions produced no significant main effect although text‐on‐screen resulted in somewhat higher recall and multimedia resulted in somewhat higher inference scores. Multimedia had the greatest effect in the case of the simple topics, and especially the simple procedural topic. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.