The attention-guiding effect and cognitive load in the comprehension of animations

To be effective, instructional animations should avoid causing high extraneous cognitive load imposed by the high attentional requirements of selecting and processing relevant elements. In accordance with the attention-guiding principle (Betrancourt, 2005), a study was carried out concerning the impact of cueing on cognitive load and comprehension of animations which depicted a dynamic process in a neurobiology domain. Cueing consisted of zooming in important information at each step of the process. Thirty-six undergraduate psychology students were exposed to an animation three times. Half of the participants received an animation without cueing while the other half received the same animation with cueing. Measures of cognitive load and comprehension performance (questions on isolated elements and on high-element interactivity material) were administered twice, after one and three exposures to the animation. The analyses revealed two main results. First, extraneous cognitive load was reduced by cueing after three exposures. Second, retention of the isolated elements was improved in both animation groups, whereas comprehension of high-element interactive material (i.e., the causal relations between elements) increased only in the cueing condition. Furthermore, a problem solving task showed that cueing supported the development of a more elaborate mental model.

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