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Cited by 1,160Visual and Cognitive Learning ProcessesInnovative Teaching and Learning MethodsOnline and Blended Learning

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 35 of the 35 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Cognitive constraints on multimedia learning: When presenting more material results in less understanding.

Mayer, Richard E., Heiser, Julie, Lonn, Steve·2001·Journal of Educational Psychology
DOI 10.1037/0022-0663.93.1.187
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Abstract

In 4 experiments, college students viewed an animation and listened to concurrent narration explaining the formation of lightning. When students also received concurrent on-screen text that summarized (Experiment 1) or duplicated (Experiment 2) the narration, they performed worse on tests of retention and transfer than did students who received no on-screen text. This redundancy effect is consistent with a dual-channel theory of multimedia learning in which adding on-screen text can overload the visual information-processing channel, causing learners to split their visual attention between 2 sources. Lower transfer performance also occurred when the authors added interesting but irrelevant details to the narration (Experiment 1) or inserted interesting but conceptually irrelevant video clips within (Experi-ment 3) or before the presentation (Experiment 4). This coherence effect is consistent with a seductive details hypothesis in which the inserted video and narration prime the activation of inappropriate prior knowledge as the organizing schema for the lesson. Multimedia scientific explanations—in CD-ROMs, on the World Wide Web, and in classroom demonstrations—are po-tentially valuable instructional tools. For example, Figure 1 shows selected slides from a 140-s multimedia explanation intended to help students understand how lightning storms develop. The multimedia explanation uses animation to depict the steps in lightning formation along with corresponding narration to describe them. Our research has documented that well designed multimedia explanations formatted like the one in Figure 1 can be highly effective in promoting students' understanding, as indicated by their ability to generate accept-able answers to open-ended transfer questions (Mayer, 1997,

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  1. Mayer, 1999b, The promise of educational psychology.

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Metadata

Authors
Mayer, R. E., Heiser, J., & Lonn, S.
Affiliations
University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
ORCID
Mayer, Richard E.
Venue
Journal of Educational Psychology
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
2001-03
Volume
93
Issue
1
Pages
187-198
ISSN
  • 0022-0663 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-2176
DOI
10.1037/0022-0663.93.1.187
OpenAlex
W2000885037
Semantic Scholar
c17e261a20efe4601b5b7e0e3e47c833271068c0
Cited by
1,029
References
33
Citations by year
2026: 36 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 45 · 2021: 47 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 52 · 2018: 47 · 2017: 47 · 2016: 55 · 2015: 58 · 2014: 62 · 2013: 66 · 2012: 54
FWCI
20.48
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Journal of Educational Psychology (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods
  • Social Sciences › Education › Online and Blended Learning
Keywords
multimedia learning, redundancy effect, coherence effects, seductive details, visual attention, screen text, narration, animation, retention, transfer, prior knowledge, lightning formation, instructional design

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