Abstract
Multimedia instructions, in which information is presented in multiple formats, afford better learning than instructions presented in a single format. Multimedia formatting is either multimodal, using audition (e.g., spoken words) and vision (e.g., pictures), or unimodal, using text and pictures. Spatial ability has been found to moderate the multimodal multimedia effect, but not the unimodal effect with visual materials. In the current study, participants received unimodal lessons about three physical systems in textual or pictorial-and-textual format. The multimedia effect was greater for participants who performed well on a cube rotation task. A second measure of spatial ability, the surface development task, did not interact significantly with instructional format. We discuss the factors that might lead to a discrepancy between the two measures of spatial ability in predicting the effects of instructional format. Results suggest that high spatial ability learners, in particular, benefit from the addition of pictures to textual instructions (the unimodal multimedia effect).
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