Presentations using a mixture of media can keep observers interest and increase the likelihood that people will retain information. When verbal and visual media are used together, offloading text for narration in the presence of visual materials often improves learning. However, recent research has pointed to the fact that this effect might be dependent on constraining the pace of presentation and that the effect is reduced when time to study static visual materials is increased. The present experiment extends this research to animated visual materials, by manipulating the verbal presentation modality and pace of presentation. There was a main effect of presentation pace and no main effect of verbal presentation modality. This lack of a modality effect was unexpected and possibly came about due to interactions with presentation pace. This suggests that designers need to consider the effects of verbal presentation modality and study time in tandem rather than as discrete design elements. This also points to the need to test other design combinations to guard against other unexpected or surprising relationships between design elements.
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