The Effects of Prior Knowledge, Presentation Mode, and Visual Realism on Student Achievement.

This experiment was designed to determine whether all types of visuals are equally effective in facilitating student achievement of identical educational objectives, whether students’ level of entering behavior (prior knowledge of the content) affects their ability to profit from visualization and subsequently perform on criterion tests designed to measure achievement of different educational objectives, and whether externally paced and self-paced methods of presenting visualized instruction are equally effective in facilitating student achievement of immediate and delayed retention of the content. The results indicate that students with high entering behavior achieved equivalent or significantly higher scores on the criterion measures than students with low and medium entering behavior regardless of the type of visualization or method of instruction received; the use of visualization to complement instruction is an effective instructional technique for reducing differences in achievement on the criterion...