The Influence of Technical Illustrations on Students - UNSWorks

The Influence of Technical Illustrations on Students'

Comprehension in Geography

by

Kenneth Norman Purnell

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the

Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in Education at the

University of New South Wales,

1990

11

Contents

Certificate of originality ........................................................................... vii

Declaration relating to disposition of project report/thesis ................................... viii

Acknowledgements ................................................................................ ix

Abs'tta.Ct ......................................................................... .................... xii

OVERVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS ............................................................... 1

SECTION 1 ......................................................................................... 3

Introduction ......................................................................................... 4

Review of empirical literature ..................................................................... 6

The picture and word problem ........................................................... 6

illustrations and text comprehension .................................................... 9

Cognitive Theory .................................................................................. 19 '

Experiment 1 ....................................................................................... 29

Method .................................................................................... . 29

Subjects ........................................................................... 29

Design ............................................................................. 30

Materials ........................................................................... 30

Procedure ......................................................................... 32

Results ..................................................................................... 33

Discussion ................................................................................. 37

Experiment 2 ....................................................................................... 39

Method ..................................................................................... 39

Subjects ........................................................................... 39

Design ............................................................................. 40

Materials ........................................................................... 44

Proced.ure ........................................................................ . 45

Results ..................................................................................... 49

iii

Discussion ................................................................................. 57

Exi;,erittlent 3 ...•...........................•..........•...•.•...•........•......................... 6()

Method .............. ....................................................................... 61

Subjec:ts ...........•......•.••...••....•...•••......•.............................. 61

Design ............................................................................. 61

Materials ........................................................................... 63

Pt-oced.llre . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . • . . . • . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Results and discussion ................................................................... 66

Experiment 4 ....................................................................................... 7 0

Method ..................................................................................... 71

Subjects ........................................................................... 71

Design ............................................................................. 71

Materials ........................................................................... 73

Pt-oced.ure .••......••......................•....................................... 7 4

Results ..................................................................................... 77

Discussion ................................................................................. 82

Exi;,erittlent 5 ....................................................................................... 86

Metltod •.....................................•.....•....•................................... 86

Subjects ........................................................................... 86

Design ............................................................................. 86

Materials ........................................................................... 89

Pt-oced.llre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Results and discussion ................................................................... 92

General Discussion Experiments 1 to 5 ......................................................... 97

SECTION 2 ...................................................................................... 102

Introduction ...................................................................................... 103

Review of empirical literature .................................................................. 105

iv

Cognitive Theory . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . .. . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . 110

Ex:l)Criment 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Method ................................................................................... 114

Subjects ................................ · ......................................... 114

l)esign . . . .. . .. . . .. . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . . . . . .. . . 114

Materials ......................................................................... 115

Procedure .. . . . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . . .. . .. . . . . . . .. . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Results and discussion ................................................................. 118

Ex:l)Criment 7 . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 121

Method ................................................................................... 121

Subjects ......................................................................... 121

l)esigii ........................................................................... 122

Materials ......................................................................... 123

Procedure ....................................................................... 123


Experiment 8 ..................................................................................... 132 ,,

Method ................................................................................... 132

Subjects ......................................................................... 132

l)esign ........................................................................... 132

Materials ......................................................................... 134

Procedure ....................................................................... 135


Experiment 9 ..................................................................................... 141

Method ................................................................................... 141

Subjects ......................................................................... 141

l)esign. ........................................................................... 142

Materials ......................................................................... 143

Procedure ....................................................................... 143

V


General Discussion Experiments 6 to 9 ....................................................... 150

GENERAL CONCLUSION ................................................................... 153

REFERENCES .................................................................................. 161

APPENDICES ................................................................................... 182

Appendix 1

Reading materials and multiple choice items for Experiment 1 ........... 183

Appendix2

Proportions correct data for students in Experiment 1 ..................... 198

Appendix3


Appendix4


Appendix5


Appendix6


Appendix?

Reading materials and multiple choice items for condition TI in

Experiment 4 .................................................................... 260

Appendix 8


Appendix 9


Appendix 10

vi


Appendix 11

Reading materials for Experiment 6 .......................................... 281

Appendix 12


Appendix 13

Reading materials and test items for Experiments 7, 8 and 9 ............. 287

Appendix 14


Appendix 15


Appendix 16


vii

Certificate of originality

I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my

knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by

another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the

award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institute of higher

learning, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text.

(Sig

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Declaration relating to disposition of project report/thesis

viii

SRPTOl

Forml

Waiver

This is to certify that I, Kenneth Norman Purnell, being a candidate for the degree

of Doctor of Philosophy, am fully aware of the policy of the University relating to

the retention and use of higher degree project reports and theses, namely that the

University retains the copies submitted for examination and is free to allow them to

be consulted or borrowed. Subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1968,

the University may issue a project report or thesis in whole or part, in photstat or

microfilm or other copying medium.

In light of these provisions I grant the University Librarian permission to publish,

or to authorize the publication of my project report/thesis, in whole or part.

I also authorize the publication by University Microfilms of a 350 word abstract in

Dissertation Abstracts International (applicable to doctorates only).

Signa

Witness ....

Date- ..

ix

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgement is made for the support and advice given by my academic

supervisor, Professor Robert Solman, at the University of New South Wales in the

conducting and reporting of this research. The friendly and professional guidance

of Robert in the planning and conducting of all aspects of the research and the

presentation of this thesis is deeply appreciated. Robert has had many articles

published in high criterion journals and his untiring work in co-authoring two

papers with me based upon my doctoral research has been invaluable. The first,

based on the Experiments 1 to 5 reported in this thesis and entitled "The influence

of technical illustrations on students' comprehension in geography", will appear in

Reading Research Quarterly, 26 (July-August, 1991). The second paper based on

the Experiments 6 to 9 reported in this thesis and co-authored also with Professor

John Sweller is under review with Instructional Science. Robert has devoted a

great deal of his time and energy to me throughout both my doctoral research and

the two papers for publication in higher criterion journals based upon my research.

The accomplishment of having these two papers published internationally and

presenting various seminars to educators on my research and its findings would not

have been possible without Robert's professional support and insightful guidance.

I am deeply indebted to Robert for his expert advice and help in all facets of

conducting and reporting my research.

I should also like to acknowledge the work done by Professor John Sweller from

the School of Education at the University of New South Wales in co-authoring the

paper entitled "The effects of technical illustrations on cognitive load". This paper

is based upon the research and findings of Experiments 6 to 9 reported in this

thesis. John has done much work in the area of cognitive science and as a result of

his extensive studies he has developed cognitive load theory. Like Robert, John

X

has had many papers, both empirical and theoretical, published in a number of

leading psychology and technical journals. His work with Robert and me in the

writing of the second paper from my doctoral research has been most helpful.

Appreciation is expressed to the staff and students at St. Andrew's Cathedral

School, Sydney. In particular, the expertise of the staff in the Economics and

Geography Department in assessing reading materials and test items used in my

research is acknowledged as is their assistance with the running of our Department

throughout my studies. The granting of my long service leave and study leave to

finish my university studies for this thesis by the Headmaster, Allan Beavis, the

work of Rick Collins in my place as Acting Head of Department and Bob

VanHouten's attending various school meetings on my behalf is very much

appreciated.

I would also like to express my deep thanks to my dear friend David Jenkins

(deceased) for his expertise and assistance in assessing the reading materials and

test items for many of the experiments I conducted in my doctoral research. David

and I grew up together and also held common interests as Geography and

Economics teachers. David had a keen interest in my doctoral research and his

proof reading of early drafts of this thesis and the paper based upon the first five

experiments reported here led him to make a number of helpful suggestions.

David's love for Geography and teaching, especially after he became a quadriplegic

in 1981, was an inspiration to me and many others with whom he came in contact

I deeply appreciated his keen interest in my studies and the encouragement he

offered to me.

Finally, I would like to express my deep appreciation to my wife Sandra for being

so supportive throughout my doctoral studies. Sandra's kindness, love and

xi

patience set a framework in which I could work effectively at all times on my

research, and in writing the two papers and this thesis. The extra work Sandra did

at home, particularly in the final stages of writing this thesis, and her loyalty and

. encouragement throughout my research contributed a great deal to getting me

through all aspects of my studies.

xii

Abstract

The use of illustrations in the comprehension of technical material was examined

for students of good to very good reading ability in nine experiments. Experiment

1 looked at the effects of using illustrations upon the comprehension of expository

text and found that the presence of different but related content in an illustration did

not improve the comprehension of the content presented in the text. These data

suggested that these illustrations could be treated as presenting information in their

own right and not simply as aids to the comprehension of content presented in text

In Experiments 2, 4 and 5 when content was presented as text and illustration

comprehension was superior. In Experiments 2, 3, 4 and 5 content presented in

an illustration was comprehended better than the same content presented in text.

These data suggested that where technical content lends itself to being presented as

either text or illustration, the comprehension of important content can be improved

by presenting it as text and illustration, and that illustrations of spatial information

are superior to the presentation of this content in text.

The effects on cognitive resources of splitting attention between illustrations and

their descriptors were examined in Experiments 6 to 9. Experiment 6 looked at the

effect of having descriptors incorporated within illustrations and found that there

was an observable advantage for combined formats over split formats. In

Experiments 7, 8 and 9 the combined form of presenting an illustration was

superior to having the descriptors for the illustration in an adjacent key. The data

suggested that the format of illustrations which requires students to mentally

integrate disparate sources of information imposes a heavy cognitive load. It was

concluded that the format of illustrations was superior when descriptors were

contained within the diagram as cognitive resources were not used in efforts to

integrate multiple sources of information.

xiii

The results of these experiments have implications which could lead to

improvement in the design of textbooks and instructional procedures.

Considerable advantages could accrue to both students and teachers by radical

recasting of cUITent instructional formats as suggested in this thesis.

1

OVERVIEW. OF EXfERIMENTS

There are two sections in this thesis which detail nine experiments on the use of

illustrations in high school geography in New South Wales 1• The first section

reports on five experiments which examine the use of illustrations and text.

Experiment 1 was concerned with the influence of a related illustration on the

comprehension of text. In this study it was observed that superior comprehension

resulted when content was presented in two forms, i.e. text and an illustration

repeated the same content. Based upon the theoretical discussion developed using

Paivio's (1971 & 1986) dual coding theory and supported by Craik and Lockhart's

( 1972) depth of processing analysis of memory and Baddeley and his colleagues

theory of working memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974, 1977; Baddeley, 1988,

1989), the effects of repeating content in text and illustration were examined in

Experiments 2, 4 and 5. The first five experiments were also concerned with

comparing student comprehension and recall2 of the same content3 depicting spatial

information in technical illustrations or in text

1 The studies reported in this thesis employed high school students in a private

school for boys in Sydney. Therefore, the examination of sex and socio

economic differences on performance in the various experimental tasks is

beyond the scope of this thesis. As is noted in the section on further research,

these may be interesting variables to examine in the future.

2 When referring to comprehension and recall in this thesis, it should be noted that

comprehension is usually considered to include cognitive manipulation of

information whereas recall may or may not involve such cognitive manipulation.

The test items used in the experiments range from measuring straight factual

recall with the potential for little or no cognitive manipulation to requiring the

making of inferences where fairly extensive cognitive processing is required.

2

The best way of presenting technical illustrations which depict spatial information

was examined in the second section of this thesis based upon Sweller's (1988,

1989) cognitive load theory. This theory suggests that better comprehension results

when descriptors for an illustration appear on that illustration rather than separate to

it. Experiments 6, 7, 8 and 9 examined the predicted advantage for combined

descriptors with the illustration over situations where these are split

3 When the same content was presented as both text and illustration, the two forms

were as close as possible in their content. As the illustration was drawn first on

each occasion, great care was taken to transcribe the content of the illustration

into text to ensure that the content of the text was as close as possible to the

content of the illustration. The end results in each case were judged by experts

to be very similar. However, it is acknowledged that text attempting to depict

the same information as an illustration cannot be literally described as having

exactly the same content For efficiency the phrase "the same content" has been

used throughout this thesis when referring to information presented in text, the

content of which very closely approximates the same infomiation presented as an

illustration.

lntrodaction to Section 1 4

Introduction

What are the effects upon learning of having written text supplemented by technical

illustrations? Textbooks often utilize a variety of technical illustrations such as

diagrams, graphs, maps and photographs of various kinds. Most of these technical

illustrations are directly related to the written text with which they appear and are

presumably included to enhance reader comprehension of the subject under

discussion. Ferguson (1981) comments "many problems can be reduced to visual

form, and such reduction often facilitates their understanding and solution. Graphs

have become a part of our everyday activity. Newspapers, popular magazines,

trade publications, business reports, and scientific periodicals use graphic

representation extensively." (p. 25). Ward (1989) is of a similar opinion: "Since

an estimated one-third of the human brain is devoted to vision and visual memory,

engaging that sense can help scientists and nonscientists alike better understand

natural phenomena. Reduced to visual imagery, vast amounts of abstract data can

be conveyed in concise and dramatic form." (p. 737). Five medical practitioners in

their textbook apologize for the complexity of parts of the text and comment that "it

is hoped that the illustrations will help in understanding this section" (Beale,

Bradbury, Chilton, Climie & Cope, 1982, p. 18). Technical illustrations are

usually designed to augment the written text for readers either with additional

information or with the intent of clarifying the text content. The impression is that

authors, teachers and students consider that the written text is better remembered,

comprehended and recalled with the use of appropriate technical illustrations than

without such illustrations.

Considerable research has been devoted to examining the effects of using

illustrations to facilitate reader comprehension of written text. These investigations

range from an examination of using pictures as aids in learning single words,

Introduction to Section 1 5

where the weight of evidence indicates that pictures inhibit the acquisition of the

word naming response (Concannon, 1975; Harzem, Lee & Miles, 1976; Lang &

Solman, 1979; Samuels, 1967, 1970; Saunders & Solman, 1984; Singh & Solman,

in press), through to an examination of the influence of illustrations upon the

comprehension of text. The results of the latter studies have been to an extent

ambiguous. Some have demonstrated little or no improvements in comprehension

of text when an illustration accompanies it (Bieger & Glock, 1986; Concannon,

1975; Koenke, 1968; Miller, 1938; O'Keefe & Solman, 1987; Peeck, 1974;

Samuels, 1970; Vernon, 1950, 1953, 1954; Weintraub, 1960; Willows, 1978).

Other studies have demonstrated reliable advantages for the comprehension of

illustrated text (e.g. Donald, 1983; Hayes & Readence, 1982, 1983; Lesgold, De

Good & Levin, 1977; Lesgold, Levin, Shimron & Guttmann, 1975; Reid, Briggs

& Beveridge, 1983; Reinking, Hayes & McEneaney, 1988). Rigney and Lutz

(1976) suggested that learning is facilitated by illustrations because they induce

readers to form mental images of the material. The formation of mental imagery has

been shown to improve recall of both illustrated and non-illustrated text (Gambrell

& Bales, 1986; Long, Winograd & Bridge, 1989; Sadoski, 1983, 1985; Sadoski,

Goetz & Kangiser, 1988). Whilst mental imagery generated by readers is not the

same as illustrations they both may depict spatial information (Peterson, 1975) and

therefore it is likely that mental images and illustrations serve similar roles in the

processing of text (Schallert, 1980). Illustrations which depict the main ideas

(Koenke & Otto, 1969), or are high up in the hierarchy of the ideas of text (Haring

& Fry, 1979) or provide an organizing context for information (Hayes & Readence,

1983) have been found to aid comprehension of non-technical text. Several

researchers have also shown that pictures arouse the interest of readers and motivate

them to read (Gombrich, 1972; Kennedy, 1974; Samuels, 1970; Vernon, 1954).

In the first section of this thesis the effects of technical illustrations upon the

comprehension of text and the efficacy of illustrations in general is examined using


materials from a school geography curriculum.

Review of empirical literature

The study of the use of illustrations in reading falls generally into two categories.

Firstly, those studies involving young children which examine the effects of

illustrations upon the learning of words, and secondly, those studies which

examine the efficacy of illustrations upon the comprehension of text The latter of

these can be divided further into those studies which have found little or no benefits

of having illustrations accompany text, and those where a significant advantage for

the comprehension of text was obtained when illustrations were present

The picture and word problem

A number of investigations have examined the use of pictures as aids in learning

single words with young children (e.g. Braun, 1969; Concannon, 1975; Harris,

1967; Harzem et al., 1976; Lang & Solman, 1979; Samuels, 1967, 1970; Saunders

& Solman, 1984; Singer, Samuels & Spiroff, 1973-1974; Singh & Solman, in

press). In general these studies have reported no benefit or negative effects for the

use of pictures. Although it is not universally accepted that pictures are not

beneficial (Denburg, 1976-1977; Read & Barnsley, 1977) the weight of empirical

evidence strongly suggests that they inhibit the rate at which words are acquired

(e.g. Lang & Solman, 1979; Saunders & Solman, 1984). By way of example

several of the studies which fail to show any advantage of illustrations in word

acquisition will be reviewed.


The earliest reported studies in this area (Miller, 1937, 1939; Weintraub, 1960)

failed to show value in using pictures to teach sight words. This work was taken

up again by Samuels (1967, 1970). In 1967 he reported a number of studies in

which children viewed words with illustrations, sentences or both and in conditions

where the children learnt the words without illustrations and/or sentences. He

found that illustrations interfered with the acquisition of sight vocabulary and this

result has been replicated by other researchers using similar materials and

procedures (Braun, 1969; Harris, 1967; Harzem et al., 1976; Singer et al., 1973-

1974). Samuels (1970) suggested that the picture distracted the child's attention

from the word as it was more familiar and salient and this interfered with their

ability to concentrate on and properly discriminate the printed word (they processed

the picture and ignored the word). He proposed what has become known as the

focal attention hypothesis to explain this phenomenon and a number of empirical

studies have supported this hypothesis that pictures distract attention away from the

words being learnt (e.g. Braun, 1969; Duell, 1968; Harzem, Lee & Mills, 1976).

Solman and colleagues set out to examine Samuels' (1970) focal attention

hypothesis (Lang & Solman, 1979; Saunders & Solman, 1984). Lang and Solman

(1979) extended the hypothesis from an information processing viewpoint. Using

Kahneman's (1973) capacity-limitation hypothesis they presented some children

with word and picture at the same time, others where word presentation preceded

the presentation of the picture and others with no picture. Lang and Solman tested

the hypothesis that the simultaneous presentation of the word with the picture may

inhibit word acquisition by temporarily overloading a child's information

processing system. There was no difference between the conditions which had the

word accompanied by pictures and the word alone condition. As it was possible

that the word and picture were perceived as unrelated a third investigation examined


the effect of drawing children's attention to the link between the two. Conditions of

explicit association were compared to conditions where the child's attention was not

drawn to the association between the picture and the word. Instructions to associate

the picture and the word resulted in superior performance to conditions in which no

such instructions were given. The association question was addressed again by

Saunders and Solman (1984) in two studies replicating the association conditions

and in addition having a control condition with no picture. They also examined the

semantic priming hypothesis (see, for example, Posner & Synder, 1985; Wheldall

& Mittler, 1977) by presenting the picture before the word and comparing this with

the condition where the word was shown prior to the picture. The results showed

no advantage for spaced over simultaneous presentation conditions, performance

was not improved by drawing some children's attention to the association between

the word and the picture, and there was no advantage for showing the picture prior

to the word. They also found that children who learnt words without pictures

recognized more of the words being taught than children in the pictorial groups.

Saunders and Solman hypothesized that the children had not yet developed

sufficient cognitive skill to form a network in which they can integrate the picture

and the word.

Various manipulations had failed to produce an advantage for having pictures

accompany words when young children learnt words. All explanations to this point

suggested cognitive reasons for this failure from Samuels (1970) focal attention

hypothesis to aspects of limited capacity and semantic priming. However, these

theories have not satisfactorily explicated this phenomenon. As a consequence

there is some incentive to look elsewhere and Solman (1986) observed that the

transfer of the verbal response from the picture, which the child could already

name, to the word appeared to be an example of blocking of serial compound

learning (Kamin 1968, 1969). The blocking effect occurs when, for example, the


picture of a giraffe and the verbal response "giraffe" have already been associated,

and it is this prior association which blocks the new association with the printed

word "giraffe". The picture-word problem was viewed as a problem in compound

conditioning by Singh and Solman (in press) and Solman, Singh and Kehoe (under

review). Studies conducted within the framework of this account by Singh &

Solman with retarded children and by Solman, Singh and Kehoe with normal

children, have demonstrated large advantages for the no picture conditions over the

picture conditions which is consistent with the blocking theory. However,

whatever the final mechanisms may be the evidence is fairly compelling for the

failure of pictures to facilitate word acquisition.

Illustrations and text comprehension

There is a general perception that readers benefit from illustrations accompanying

text and that both illustrations and text have information which can be derived from

them. Research has indicated that information gained from text is the result of

interaction of the prior knowledge of the reader and the text (Anderson, Reynolds,

Schallert & Goetz, 1977; Bransford & Johnson, 1972; Brown, 1976; Dean &

Enemoh, 1983; Pichert & Anderson, 1977; Schallert, 1976). Existing knowledge

of readers has also been found to play a part in the interpretation and recall of

illustrations (Baggett, 1975; Franks & Bransford, 1971). Authors and publishers

select particular words and illustrations to convey their intended meaning and in so

doing there is a deliberate attempt to constrain the interpretive and constructive

processes of readers (Schallert 1980). Often illustrations are selected to accompany

text in the belief that they have some facilitative effect upon the comprehension of

text by perhaps making the text content clearer. However, when this suggestion

was looked at closely by Samuels (1970) he reported no such benefit and a further


review of the literature by Concannon (1975) came to the same conclusion. While

there are a number of studies which clearly show little or no benefit for the

comprehension of text by having accompanying related illustrations, there has been

a growing body of empirical evidence to suggest that the presence of illustrations

can improve text comprehension. The following discussion reviews the literature

on the efficacy of illustrations as aids to text comprehension. For convenience

studies have been grouped into those which found little or no benefit of having

illustrations accompany text on the comprehension of the text and those which

found some positive effects.

No benefit from illustrations

Early studies in the area of the contribution of illustrations to text comprehension

were undertaken by Miller (1938), Vernon (1950, 1953, 1954), Weintraub (1960)

and Koenke (1968). Both Miller and Weintraub used published basal readers for

materials (with simple narrative prose) and removed the illustrations for the no

picture condition. Miller found no advantage for the group with the illustrations

accompanying the text - a result replicated by Weintraub. Interestingly, Weintraub

found that with poor readers the no picture group comprehended the text better than

the group with related illustrations accompanying the text. Vernon ( 1953)

conducted two experiments in which she examined the effects of using pictorial

illustrations upon the remembering of written texts with boys and girls aged from

15 to 19. The reading materials were from health and history. Vernon found that

written material was remembered no better when accompanied by an illustration

than one not having an illustration. This finding was consistent with her earlier

work in 1950 when she found that the ability to understand and remember written

text was not always facilitated when the text was accompanied by a graph or chart


(Vernon, 1950). However, Vernon (1950) found a localized effect when some

specific key points made in the text were remembered better when graphs or

pictures were related to them, but overall she found no benefit for the

comprehension of text with accompanying related illustrations. Vernon (1953)

suggested that readers' attention may be distracted from text by illustrations not

closely related to it and so reduced comprehension of the text. However, Vernon

speculated that a positive benefit of illustrations may be to arouse reader interest in

text and motivating them to read. This suggestion is supported by the work of

Gombrich, 1972, Kennedy, 1974, and Samuels, 1970. Further work by Vernon

(1954) using children aged 11 and 12 in two experiments replicated her earlier

findings of no benefit for the comprehension of text of having accompanying

relevant illustrations. Koenke (1968) presented students in third and fourth grade

with illustrated and non-illustrated text about the places in which birds build their

nests. He found that children reading the illustrated versions of the stories did not

comprehend the text better than those without the illustrations.

Using an adapted cartoon strip with nine and ten year old children Peeck (1974)

provided evidence that illustrations do not facilitate comprehension of certain

information in text One group of children received the stories with illustrations and

another without. Questions on these materials tested recall and comprehension of

content in either the text alone, the illustrations alone or both the text and

illustrations. On tests immediately after reading the material, a day later and a week

later without re-reading the materials Peeck found comprehension by the group with

illustrations outperformed the text only group - but this benefit was largely

attributed to performance on the information presented in picture. There was no

difference between the illustration with text and text only conditions on questions

based on the text alone. That is, the presence of the illustrations did not improve

the comprehension of the text


Donald (1983) examined the effects of illustrations as providers of contextual

information for text with primary aged children at different progress and

developmental levels. He examined the contextual hypothesis which considers that

illustrations facilitate text comprehension by increasing the reader's access to

semantic information. Overall, Donald found that illustrations did not constitute a

significant source of information for readers and failed to improve comprehension

of text. He suggested that as readers develop their ability to utilize the linguistic

constraints of the text itself they may become more independent of an illustration

finding the text a more reliable basis for contextual prediction and confirmation.

O'Keefe and Solman (1987) conducted three experiments in which the effects of

illustrations on children's comprehension of written stories were examined. Five

illustration conditions were used in the experiments: one in which there was no

illustration accompanying the text and four conditions in which illustrations related

to the text were presented before or after it. The first two studies indicated that the

presence of related illustrations did not improve comprehension of text and that their

placement before or after the text did not affect recall. In their third experiment

O'Keefe and Solman presented the illustration groups with more illustrations

positioned adjacent to the text. They noted that the combined effect of these

illustrations was to provide more information and they found that recall for both

illustrated and non-illustrated paragraphs for the picture groups was improved.

O'Keefe and Solman suggested that this improved performance on text

comprehension was largely due to the motivational effects of the illustrations. A

localized advantage for the immediate placement and association of pictures with

text was found, but overall O'Keefe and Solman reported little advantage for the

comprehension of text by having a related illustration present.


Positive effects from illustrations

The literature on the use of illustrations to facilitate the comprehension of text was

reviewed by Schallert (1980). After deciding in general that the evidence came

down on the side of illustrations improving text comprehension she speculated on

the mechanisms involved. Schallert suggested that illustrations were likely to help

comprehension if they represented spatial information or information that was

important to the total message of the text. She also considered the question of

presenting content in both text and illustration. If much content overlaps between

an illustration and text then it is likely to be processed twice and it might be

expected to lead to better comprehension. It is possible that variation in the amount

of content presented in these two forms has contributed to the differences reported

in the literature on the effects of illustrations upon the comprehension of text (i.e.

the greater the overlap the more likely that the presence of an illustration will

improve the comprehension of text). However, as Schallert has noted the

improvement in comprehension may not be due to the content simply being

repeated but may be a consequence of the provision of dual access routes to

comprehension.

Read and Barnsley (1977) conducted an experiment using basal reading materials

with adults which were modified from what their subjects had viewed some 20 to

30 years earlier. They had three conditions of text alone, text and illustrations and

illustrations alone and found that the illustrations condition was superior to text and

that the best performance was on illustrations and text together. These researchers

concluded that the interaction of both verbal and pictorial components improved the

processing and storage of early reading materials. However, from their report it

appears that there was a limited amount of overlap of the content presented in text·


and the content presented in illustration and further, subjects needed both the text

and the illustration to answer all the questions. The overall level of performance

was judged on a combination of material presented as text and as illustration and

therefore it is not clear from the results what improved performances could be

attributed to.

In an experiment with fourth grade children Rohwer and Harris (1975) used

materials on different kinds of monkeys under seven conditions: text only,

illustration only, oral only, text plus illustration, text plus oral, illustration plus

oral, and print plus picture plus oral. The illustration plus oral condition was found

to be superior to the text plus oral condition replicating the findings of Rohwer and

Matz (1975). However, the text only condition was superior to the illustration only

condition. This was possibly due to the differences in the information content

between the text and illustration with some questions for subjects not being able to

be answered from the content of the illustration alone. Further analysis by Schallert

(1980) of their data led her to suggest that if text can be easily decoded then

illustrations can improve comprehension if they provide a different access route to

the content of the text. That is, contrasting with simple repetition of content in in

which either text is repeated or illustration repeated, repetition of content in two

forms (text and illustration) may be superior. Levin, Bender and Lesgold (1976)

found that orally repeating a sentence was not as good as providing an illustration

with first grade children and Schallert cited their work as providing further evidence

that illustrations had a significant facilitative effect upon comprehension beyond

simple repetition.

A series of experiments with first grade children lead Lesgold, Levin, Shimron and

Guttman (1975) to conclude that illustrated stories were superior to non-illustrated

ones. Further work by Lesgold et al. ( 1977) on the effects of illustrations upon


young children's prose learning with first grade students again found that

illustrations were helpful in improving text comprehension under certain

conditions. After listening to a story a child in the illustration condition was given

the background scene for the story in the form of an illustration and the needed

cutouts and was told to illustrate the story by placing the cutouts on the

background. The results showed that the illustration subjects outperformed those

who did not use the illustration. Illustrations which specifically represent the

information in text with the more salient aspects emphasized at the expense of

irrelevant or potentially interfering components were found to facilitate young

children's learning from prose.

A number of studies have investigated the effects of having pictures presented

before text (Arnold & Brooks, 1976; Bransford & Johnson, 1972; Dean &

Enemoh, 1983, Dean & Kulhavy, 1981; Tajika, Taniguchi, Yamamoto & Mayer,

1988). Generally these have shown positive effects upon the comprehension and

recall of text. For example, Bransford and Johnson found that concrete drawings

presented before reading an ambiguous prose passage · improved text

comprehension. Dean and Enemoh found that a photograph of a meandering river

presented prior to reading related text resulted in superior performance than when

the text was presented alone. Tajika et al. also found that integrated advance

pictorial organizers improved text comprehension whereas abstract ones did not.

These researchers have generally suggested that the positive effects obtained for

using illustrations as advance organizers is due to the provision of an integrated

organizational context for the text (Arnold & Brooks, 1976; Tajika et al., 1988).

However, from the reports of these studies it is not clear what the relationship

between the text and the illustration is and it may be the case that where positive

effects are reported there is some overlap between the two.


Reid et. al. (1983) following on from earlier work which indicated that illustrations

can improve the comprehension of text (Goldstein & Underwood, 1981; Holliday

1973; Reese 1970), used illustrations related to texts on the heart with 14-year-old

science students. Reid et al. tested long-term memory store, or what they described

as the cognitively integrated network of propositions (Anderson, 1980), by

administering the post test 15 minutes after reading. The illustrated conditions were

found to be superior to the text only conditions. Reid et al. hypothesized that the

two modes of input (text and illustration) may lead to more effective storage

networks being developed as a consequence of attempts to reconcile the two inputs.

They further suggested that illustrations may induce a deeper level of processing of

text and thereby improve comprehension and recall of text.

Bieger and Glock ( 1986) examined the effect on performance of presenting selected

categories of information in text and picture with undergraduate students. Their

hypotheses were that pictorial depiction of spatial information would allow subjects

to do an assembly tasks faster than subjects who had written instructions only, and

that textual depiction of that same spatial information would result in fewer

assembly errors by subjects. The results showed that when operational and spatial

information were in picture, subjects performed the assemblies in significantly less

time, but made significantly more errors than when the information was in text form

only. That is, performance on some tasks was superior when content relevant to

the tasks was presented in illustrations rather than text and on other tasks the text

was superior. From the report of the study it appears that at least some of the

information content of the text and illustrations differed and also there was no

presentation of text and illustration together to see if this condition was superior to

either of the single form presentations.


A study done by Reinking et al. (1988) examined the effects of explicitly cuing

graphic aids in accompanying text with good and poor readers in years 7 and 8.

The students read passages under five conditions. Four conditions had illustrations

accompanying text. The other condition had text alone. Of the first four

conditions, there was no cuing of the illustrations in one condition and in the other

three different cuing conditions were presented. Each of the four conditions which

had graphic aids had one which was redundant and one which was non-redundant

to the text. Reinking et al. found that the cuing conditions were superior to the no r

illustration condition for both redundant and non-redundant information in the

illustrations. Cued illustrations were superior to text of the same content but

illustrations with no cues were recalled no better than non-illustrated text Subjects

in the cuing conditions outperformed those who had illustrations which were not

cued. They also found that performance on redundant illustrations was superior to

non-redundant illustrations but they failed to plausibly explain this result suggesting

only that "better recall might have been the result of better comprehension of the

text" (p. 240). Also, as Reinking et al. admit, they did not control for the degree to

which comprehension of the text was dependent upon the ~nformation in the

illustrations. Therefore it is not clear to what extent any beneficial results obtained

for the comprehension of text were due to the overlap of text with accompanying

illustrations or to cuing. From the results obtained Reinking et al. hypothesized that

cues may have stimulated more intensive processing of the text and that improved

recall for redundant illustrations was due to cuing. For poor readers Reinking et al.

found that text comprehension was improved with the presence of related

illustrations which were cued in the text


Comments upon related literature:

In the studies reported there have been a number of issues that need to be

commented upon. Within the studies reviewed there have been a variety of

approaches which can be divided into those which were ecologically valid and

those which were not. Amongst those studies which were ecologically valid and

used materials normally studied in classrooms, only a few used expository text

with technical illustrations in subjects such as science (e.g. Reinking et al., 1988),

and most used prose and non-technical illustrations. When benefits for the

comprehension of text by having a relevant illustration present have been reported it

is often not clear whether the results are reporting a benefit for the combined text

and illustration or text alone or illustration alone or to some other effect. From

these investigations three areas stand out as particularly interesting for further

empirical work. Firstly, the effects of technical illustrations which have content

related to but additional to expository text needs to be studied. Secondly,

examination needs to be made of situations where it is possible to present content as

either expository text or illustration. Thirdly, the question of the benefits of

overlapping content between text and technical illustrations needs to be

systematically examined.

The studies reported in this thesis all use ecologically valid materials in a technical

area - geography. The principal empirical questions examined in this first section

are whether content presented as a technical illustration is comprehended better than

the same content presented as expository text, and whether repeating technical

content in illustration and text improves comprehension .. However, before

progressing to the first study it is appropriate to discuss some of the cognitive

theory which relates to these questions.


Cognitive Theory

There are a great number of psychological theories from which predictions can be

made concerning the primary empirical questions examined in the first section of

this thesis. For example, it may be possible to draw some from Parallel Distributed

Processing models (Hinton & Anderson, 1989), from various theories of

processing of visible language such as Kolers, Wrolstad & Bouma, 1979, from

perspectives in behavioural neuroscience offered by McGaugh, 1989 and

Thompson, 1989, and from cognitive psychology (e.g. Mandler, 1989; Morton,

1979; Neisser, 1989; Tulving, 1983, 1985a, 1985b). To a greater or lesser extent

all these theories ~an be used to make predictions of the cognitive consequences of

presenting text with illustrations. However, there is one model of memory which

gives comprehensive predictions relevant to the first section of this thesis. Paivio's

(1971, 1986) dual coding theory of memory can be used to make predictions in

both the case of comprehension and recall of illustrations as well as the likely

effects of presenting the same content in text and illustration. The relevant aspects

of dual coding theory will be detailed along with the support provided by the

cognitive theories of memory of Baddeley and his colleagues (Baddeley & Hitch,

1974, 1977; Baddeley, 1988, 1989) and Craik and Lockhart (1972).

Paivio's (1971, 1986) dual coding theory allows for predictions of the cognitive

consequences of both the efficacy of illustrations and the effects of repetition of

content. In the context of the first section of this thesis there are two aspects

relevant to dual coding theory worth considering. The first is the relationship of the

content in the illustration and the content in the text, particularly in the case of

repetition or overlap. The second is the illustrations themselves. In both cases dual

coding theory predicts improved comprehension and recall due to information being

represented and processed in a verbal store and in a nonverbal store in memory.


According to Paivio (1986) these codes are functionally independent and one can be

active without the other or they may operate in parallel. At the same time he

considers that the two systems can be interconnected and activity in one can initiate

activity in the other. The verbal code specializes in dealing with the representation

and processing of language (e.g. the text and any word labels in illustrations), and

the nonverbal (imaginal) code with the analysis of scenes (including pictorial

information and visual images of the word labels in illustrations) and the generation

of mental images. Paivio (1986) contends that activation of both codes "can have

additive effects on recall. Moreover, the evidence suggests that imaginal and verbal

codes are unequal in mnemonic value, perhaps by a 2: 1 ratio favoring the image

code." (p. 77). This suggests that illustrations may improve comprehension of text

in those cases where the content is sufficiently closely related to facilitate the

operation of interconnections between codes. When an illustration repeats much of

the content present in text this facilitation of interconnections is almost certainly

going to occur with, for example, words referring to images and images to words

(Paivio & Lambert, 1981). Therefore, the same content presented in both text and

illustration is likely to be recalled as a conglomerate of verbal and nonverbal

information, and is likely to result in superior memory and comprehension to the

direct repetition of content in either text or illustration only.

In the case of the illustrations used in these studies which have pictorial content

combined with verbal labels, dual coding is likely to be initiated even in the absence

of any separately presented text. The pictorial content would be encoded in the

nonverbal store whilst the verbal labels are likely to be encoded in both the verbal

store and images of the labels in the nonverbal store. This should facilitate

interconnections between the two subsystems as described above and thus improve

comprehension and recall. Paivio and Casapo (1973) and Paivio (1975) contend

that illustrations are more likely to be dually coded than words. Further, Paivio

Introduction to Section I 21

argues that the imaginal subsystem is superior to the verbal subsystem and as a

consequence one would expect that illustrations would be recalled better than text of

the same content (Paivio, 1971, 1975, 1983, 1986; Paivio & Casapo, 1973).

Therefore, technical illustrations such as the ones used in these studies may well be

a superior method of presentation. In the case of these particular illustrations which

portray spatial information it would also be predicted by the work of Kolers (1973)

that such illustrations would be superior to texts, and Nelson and his colleagues

(Nelson, Reed & McEvoy, 1977; Nelson, Reed & Walling, 1976) also predict that

illustrations are superior to words due to the more elaborate sensory codes of

pictures compared to words.

Paivio's theory has not been without its challenges - both theoretical and empirical.

While some of these challenges may not be trivial within the context of psychology,

their detail is beyond the scope of the discussion in this thesis where a theoretically

coherent and consistent explanation of empirical findings under ecologically valid

conditions is the primary aim. Therefore Paivio's response to the primary critics of

his theory will only be dealt with briefly and the reader is referred to Paivio's

(1986) own detailed responses (see especially pages 33 to 52). There are a number

theorists who are sceptical of representational theories of memory such as Paivio.

Skinner (e.g. 1953, 1963, 1975) argues against models of the mind and suggests

that behaviour results from the experiential history of the individual and that "mental

life" has no causal role in behaviour. Paivio (1986) dismisses these arguments

based upon Skinner's premise of causality and Skinner's (1953) own work which

encourages the use of mental representations. Gibson (1966, 1979) rejects

representational concepts on the basis of his own theory that perception is the result

of information pickup and that the stimulus situation contains the necessary

organizational information so that images, ideas and memory stores are not needed

in the brain. As Paivio (1986) suggests, Gibson's theory "simply rephrases the


problem of representation in such terms as 'registering of invariants,' or 'tuning of

a perceptual system to the invariants"' (p. 40). Kolers and his colleagues (Kolers,

1978; Kolers & Roediger, 1984; Kolers & Smythe, 1979, 1984) hold a similar

view to Gibson in that they emphasize the means by which knowledge is acquired

rather than on the storage or representation of that information. Like Gibson,

Kolers' ideas do not completely reject mental representations.

In addition to these sceptics of mental representations there are a number of theories

of memory and other cognitive tasks which are based upon the notion of mental

processes primarily being performed in a single verbal or linguistic mode (e.g.

Bower, 1972; Kieras, 1978; Osgood, 1973; Pylyshyn, 1973, 1984). Paivio's

(1971, 1986) model reacts against this singular view and emphasises the

importance of nonverbal imagery as a mode of thought which is distinct from,

though coordinated with, verbal processes. A simple representation of the

differences between those theorists proposing a common coding model and

Paivio's dual coding model is given in Figure 1. Whilst there have been challenges

to Paivio's ideas, the supporting evidence for his dual coding theory has been

compelling and a number of propositional theorists have adopted similar structures

in their models (e.g. Anderson, 1978, 1983; Anderson & Bower, 1973; Brainerd,

1983; Hebb, 1980; Johnson-Laird, 1983; Olson & Bialystok, 1983). Powerful

effects which have been attributed to imagery have been reported by Bower, 1972,

Bugelski, 1970, Cornoldi, 1976, Denis, 1979, Gambrell and Bales, 1986, Katz,

1983, Long, Winograd and Bridge, 1989, Paivio, 1969, 1971, 1975, 1978, 1979,

1986, Resse, 1970, Richardson, 1980, Rohwer, 1970, Sadoski, 1983, 1985,

Sadoski, Goetz and Kangiser, 1988 and Yuille, 1983. Paivio (1983) cites some 60

reliable empirical findings which provide positive evidence for dual coding (see

especially pages 310-323), and in his 1986 textbook detailing the developments in

his theory since its first publication in 1971, Paivio reviews the empirical evidence

Introduction to Section I 23

supporting his dual coding approach to memory (see especially pages 148-176).

Yuille (1983, p. X) comments that Paivio "has evaluated his model against all of the

relevant evidence. His review of the variety of paradigms in which dual-coding

theory has been tested provides impressive evidence of the viability of his theory.

He demonstrates that dual-coding theory has no rivals in predicting and explaining

research outcomes." The balance of evidence supports Paivio's dual coding

approach to memory.

Introduction to Section 1

A. Common coding model showing

picture and word access to a

single conceptual store:

Se.man.tic me.m.ory

Conce.pt

Picture. Word re.cognition re.cognition

Picture. Word

24

B. Dual coding model showing

picture and word access to the

nonverbal and verbal stores:

Nonve.rbal Ve.rbal me.m.ory me.m.ory t t

-! le -! le ·= ., ·=-2 ""' iJ ""' iJ 0 .. 0 .. ... _ ... _ "".., "" .., ~" ~" ... R.«f«Hntbl ... I C once.pt i: I~ C once.pt I

ubtions

Picture. Word

Figure 1: Schematic representations of single coding and dual

coding models of memory

After: Pictures and words in semantic decisions by J. Te Linde, in Ima~ery.

memm:.v and co~ition; Essays in honor of Allan Paivio (pp. 118 and 120)

by J. C. Yuille (Ed.), 1983, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum.

There are two important theories of cognition which add support to Paivio's notions

- working memory developed by Baddeley and his colleagues (Baddeley, 1988,

1989; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974, 1977; Logie, Baddeley, Mane, Donchin &

Sheptak, 1988) and depth of processing in memory (Craik & Lockhart, 1972).

Both these theories have generated considerable research (see, for example,


Baddeley, 1989; Masson & Miller, 1983; Schallen, 1976) but they are quite

different in their concepts of memory. Baddeley conceives memory as being

composed of various interrelated storages and emphasises the importance of

working memory, whereas Craik and Lockhart provide a non-structural view of

memory which reacts against the concept of short term and long term memory and

emphasises that coding has a more important effect upon memory trace. However,

in the present context the interesting thing is that both of these theories have ideas

which are consistent with Paivio (1971, 1986) and in the case of Baddeley (1989)

this is acknowledged (pp. 112-113).

Baddeley's notions of working memory are consistent with and add some support

to Paivio's (1971, 1986) dual coding theory. Work by Baddeley and Hitch (1974,

1977) on short term memory led them to abandon previous notions of a single

unitary system for short term memory and propose an alternate theory of working

memory. Their model of memory assumes that there is a controlling central

executive of limited capacity which has a number of subsidiary slave systems.

They explored two such subsystems in detail and suggested that one, the

visuospatial scratch pad, temporarily stores and manipulates visuospatial

information and that the other, the articulatory loop, temporarily holds speech

based material. Further work by Logie and Baddeley (1987) in situations where,

for example, a person is asked to count the number of windows in their home,

found that most people form mental images of their house and then count the

windows. They suggested that the visual images formed of the windows were held

in the visuospatial sketchpad and the counting (verbal material) in the articulatory

loop. That is, there are two stores of such information in memory. This supports

Baddeley's (1981) earlier work in which he suggested that information presented

visually is stored in the visuospatial scratchpad and if a person sub-articulates the

material this may then be registered also in the articulatory loop. It is interesting to


note that for individual words Baddeley (1989) considers that those which lend

themselves to the creation of mental images are recalled better as a result of being

encoded in both verbal memory and in temporary visuospatial images. That is,

under certain conditions Baddeley would expect some information to be dually

coded. Baddeley (1989) suggests that further research in the area of using text

needs to be done and notes: "one area that would clearly (be) worth exploring

further is the role of the (visuospatial) system in reading and comprehension." (p.

114). This suggestion is directly relevant to the studies the first section of this

thesis which examine the effects of illustrations upon comprehension and recall of

text.

Baddeley and his colleagues' work supports the predictions of Paivio ( 1971, 1986)

that technical illustrations are likely to be superior to text of the same content and

that repetition in two forms (text and illustration) will be superior to single form

repetition (either text repeated or illustration repeated). They suggest that

illustrations will be encoded in both the visuospatial scratch pad and the articulatory

loop and one would expect that this would be very similar in effects to Paivio's idea

that illustrations are likely to be encoded both verbally and nonverbally. For the

repetition of the same content in various forms (text repeated, illustration repeated

and text and illustration), the research on working memory would suggest that

illustrations are likely to be stored in both the visuospatial scratch pad and the

articulatory loop and that at least some text in both these slave systems. This lends

support to the prediction based upon Paivio's dual coding theory that in repetition

in two forms (text and illustration) will be superior to single form repetition (either

text repeated or illustration repeated).

Craik and Lockhart (1972) formulated an approach to memory which did not rely

upon the model of structurally separate short term and long term memory systems.


Their "levels of processing" approach to memory was based upon the concept that

coding itself was the main factor in determining the durability of memory trace.

They suggested that information which is more deeply processed will have a

stronger memory trace and be remembered longer. Deeper processing occurs when

information is processed through a hierarchy of stages from preliminary ones in

which physical features are identified to latter stages in which meaning is extracted.

Craik and Tulving (1975) built upon this work suggesting that greater breadth of

processing also improved memory trace. The depth of processing concept of

memory has been used by a number of researchers to explain various aspects of the

comprehension and recall of illustrations and text (e.g. Schallert, 1976). However,

the theory has come in for some criticism as it is difficult to specify what constitutes

greater depth and breadth of processing (see, for example, Baddeley, 1978, 1989;

Neisser, 1989). Even so, it is interesting to note that if you consider notions of

dual coding theory (Paivio 1971, 1986) with verbal codes, nonverbal codes, dual

access, images referring to words and words to images, then there is the suggestion

that greater depth of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) and certainly greater

breadth of processing (Craik & Tulving, 1975) will occur. Presentation of the

same content as text and illustration will give greater breadth of content and efforts

to integrate the two sources of the same information in memory are likely to result

in greater depth of processing (Reid et al., 1983).

The concepts of depth (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) and breadth (Craik & Tulving,

197 5) of processing suggest that content repeated in two forms will be superior to

single form repetition. They suggest further that illustrations which require the

integration of the pictorial content with word labels will be comprehended and

recalled better than text of the same content as greater depth of processing is likely

than perhaps is the case for the same content in text. However, even if illustrations

of the kind used here do not result in truly deeper processing, it is almost inevitable


that greater breadth or more processing will result due to the two interconnecting

stores of information in memory as predicted by Paivio. Under these

circumstances Craik and Lockhart and Craik and Tulving give the same predictions

as Paivio.

Experiment 1 29

Experiment 1

The effects of illustrations were examined under three conditions in this study.

There were two illustration with text conditions and one which presented text only.

In the first condition text with a related illustration with content largely additional to

the text was presented. In the second condition the text was modified to include

the content of the illustration. In the third condition this modified text and the

illustration were presented. The same content information was presented in all

three conditions which allowed for an examination of the following predictions:

Firstly, if there is sufficient interaction activity between the verbal and nonverbal

stores in memory, then the presence of an illustration which is related to but largely

additional to the content of text (i.e there is little or no repetition) is likely to result

in better comprehension of the text. Secondly, as discussed above, it would be

expected that repetition of content in two forms (text and illustration) would lead

improved comprehension. Thirdly, technical illustrations conveying spatial

information are likely to be comprehended and recalled better than the same content

presented as text.

Method

Subjects

Seventy-five boys who study geography in Years 10 and 11 at a high school in

Sydney took part in this study. Three groups of twenty-five students each were

selected on the basis of their geography test results from the end of the previous

school year (i.e. each group was of equal ability in geography). The resulting

mean scores on the geography test were 63.2, 63.0 and 65.5 and not surprisingly

an analysis of variance indicated these small differences were not significant

[F(2,72)=0.33, p>.05). There were ten Year 11 students and fifteen Year 10

Experiment 1 30

students in each group. The students ranged in age from 14.8 years to 16.8 years

(mean age 15.7 years).

Desim

The same geographical content was presented in three ways:

Group 1 had text with an accompanying illustration with related but largely new

content.

Group 2 had the same text as the first group, and the content of the illustration

presented in additional text (i.e. there was no illustration).

Group 3 had the same text as the second group and the illustration (i.e. the

content of the illustration appeared in two forms).

This design resulted in the same text being presented to all three groups and the

content of the illustration being presented to Group 1 as illustration, Group 2 as text

and Group 3 as both text and illustration. Post learning performance was measured

on a set of multiple choice items based on the content in text alone and a separate set

of items based on the content in the illustration alone. The following comparisons

between the methods of presentation were planned for the analysis of the data: In

the case of the content in the text, the performance on the text with accompanying

illustration (i.e. Groups 1 and 3) was compared with performance on the text in the

absence of the illustration (i.e. Group 2). In the case of the content in the

illustration, the single presentation was compared with its repetition (i.e. Group 1

which had this content as an illustration [I] and Group 2 which had this content as

text [T] with Group 3 which had this content as both text and illustration [TI]), and

the content of the illustration was compared with the same content presented as text

(i.e. Group 1 [I] with Group 2 [T]).

Materials

A passage of expository text with a technical illustration on the water cycle was

Experiment 1 31

chosen from a senior geography textbook by Bonnor (1988, p. 94). The

accompanying illustration showed the relationships between various aspects of the

water cycle, most of which were not dealt with in the text. This text was 366

words in length. Group 1 read this text with the illustration. Group 2 had the text

rewritten so that it contained the same content as the illustration but had no

illustration. This increased the text length to 527 words. Group 3 had the rewritten

text from Group 2 and the illustration - the content of the illustration was repeated in

text and illustration. The reading materials used in this Experiment are shown in

Appendix 1. While there was no obvious way to ensure that the content of the

illustration could be exactly represented in text, care was taken to do this as

precisely as possible and the final product was judged to be of very similar content

by two authorities in geography and the dux of Year 12 at the high school where the

Experiment was conducted.

Each of the reading materials consisted of three quarto pages stapled together. The

content was preceded by the instructions followed by a blank page (to prevent

students from viewing the content through the instructions page). The content

which included the illustration in the case of Groups 1 and 3 was presented on a

single page and the illustration was generally cued in the text. The test of

comprehension and recall was presented separately on six quarto pages. It

consisted of instructions, a blank page and twenty multiple choice items. The first

ten items referred to the text given to all three groups and the second were based

upon the content of the illustration. All groups did the same multiple choice items.

The same experts who judged the reading materials judged the test items to be of

equivalent difficulty and to be measuring the same objectives. Using Bloom,

Engelhart, Furst, Hill, and Krathwohl's (1956) taxonomy to classify each question

the experts found that with both sets of ten items, eight tested knowledge, one

comprehension and one application. The text was prepared using Apple Macintosh

Experiment 1 32

"Times" 12 point typestyle.

Procedure

The Experiment was conducted in one teaching period of 50 minutes for each class.

Upon entering the geography room the students were instructed to sit in one of

three rows appropriate to the group to which they had been assigned. Once all

students were seated they were told: "We will be doing a geography comprehension

exercise today and there will be a 20 item multiple choice test to do based upon the

reading material. The material in Part A will be read and the test done under exam

conditions with no interaction with other students. You are to follow all

instructions. The reading material will be placed flat on the desk in front of you -

you are not to move it until instructed to do so. You will be given five minutes

reading time and at the end of this time the reading material will be taken up from

you and the test (Part B) distributed." Appropriate reading materials were then

distributed to each member of each group and the instructions on the first page were

read aloud by the experimenter:

" 1. When instructed to do so, turn the first page and the blank page to page 3 of

Part A. Carefully read the material in Part A. You will be given five minutes

reading time.

2. You should re-read the material if you have any spare time.

3. You may not mark this material.

4. At the end of the reading time you will be doing a multiple choice test based

upon the material you have read."

The students were then told "commence reading". The students were given five

minutes to read the content page (preliminary investigation of the time required to

read this material indicated that five minutes was more than sufficient). At the end

of this time the students were told to cease reading and close the reading material up

Experiment 1 33

so that it was left flat on the desk with page one at the front ready to be collected.

The reading material was collected and the twenty item multiple choice test and

associated answer sheet distributed with the direction to leave these test flat on the

desk. The instructions on the first page of the test were read aloud by the

experimenter:

"1. On the Answer Sheet write your name in the space provided and then put your

pen down.

2. Read the directions on the Answer Sheet carefully.

3. When instructed to do so turn the first page and the blank page to page 3 of Part

B and answer the questions in the multiple choice test. These items are based

upon the material which you have just read in Part A. You are to attempt all

twenty multiple choice items in Part B."

The experimenter then informed students that :

"You will have approximately twelve minutes in which to do the test but if anyone

has not finished all items more time will be allowed so that everyone has sufficient

time to complete all the questions." (Preliminary investigation had also indicated

that twelve minutes was sufficient time to answer all these questions.) Once all

students had completed all twenty items in the multiple choice test the experimenter

instructed them, "put your pens down".

Results

Observation of the percentage correct scores in Figure 2 suggests that the

performances on the test items covering the content of the original text were very

similar (the means and standard deviations of the proportions correct data are

shown in Table 1). That is, there was no suggestion that Groups 1 and 3 who had

the advantage of the illustration in conjunction with the text outperformed Group 2

Experiment 1 34

without the illustration. The planned orthogonal comparison of the average

performance of Groups 1 and 3 with Group 2 did not reach significance

[F(l,72)=0.02, p>.05]. Also there was no statistically significant difference in

performance between the two groups that did have the illustration presented

(Groups 1 and 3) [F(l,72)=0.43, p>.05].

Figure 2: Percentage correct for each of three groups of subjects on

questions referring to the information in the text

70

60

% 50

correct

"10

30

0 Text with

illustration Rew'ritten

text Rew'ritten text & ill ust ration

Experiment 1 35

Table 1: Proportions correct group means and standard deviations

for questions referring to the text in Experiment 1

Group 1

(text with illustration)

Group 2

(rewritten text only)

Group 3

(rewritten text & illustration)

Average

Mean

% correct

70.8

70.0

69.2

70.0

Standard

Deviation

19.8

15.8

13.8

The percentage correct scores on the content in the illustration as shown in Figure 3

( the means and standard deviations of the proportions correct data are shown in

Table 2), indicate that the group that received the repeated content (TI)

outperformed the two groups that received the single presentation either as text (T)

or as illustration (I). The planned comparison between Group 3 and the average

perlonnance of Groups 1 and 2 showed that this difference reached significance

[F(l,72)=7.95, p<.01]. Figure 3 also indicates that there is a small advantage for

the illustrated presentation over the text presentation but the comparison of Group 1

(I) with Group 2 (T) was not significant [F(l,72)=0.80, p>.05].

Experiment 1 36

Figure 3: Percentage correct for each of three groups of subjects on

questions referring to the information in the illustration

70

60

% 50

correct

'10

30

0

Illustration Text Illustration &text


for questions referring to the illustration in Experiment 1

Mean Standard

% correct Deviation

Group 1 42.8 17.4

(text with illustration)

Group 2 38.4 18.0

(rewritten text only)

Group 3 55.4 18.5

(rewritten text & illustration)

Average 45.3

Experiment 1 37

The proportions correct data are tabled in Appendix 2.

Discussion

The results showed in the two conditions where an illustration accompanied text

recall performance on the content of the text did not differ from the condition in

which there was no illustration. The content of the illustration was relevant to the

content of the text but almost entirely additional to it It has been argued by several

researches that the motivating effect of illustrations enhances the comprehension of

text (Gombrich, 1972; Kennedy, 1974; Samuels, 1970). Vernon (1953) suggested

that illustrations might stimulate the reader to examine the text more closely and

encourage a more active and thoughtful interest in the topic presented. One might

expect under these circumstances that text with an accompanying relevant

illustration would be comprehended better. Some previous studies have suggested

that this is the case (Donald, 1983; Hayes & Readence, 1982, 1983; Reid et al.,

1983; Reinking et al., 1988). However, the results in this study do not support

this conclusion and Peeck ( 197 4) has shown that improved performance in the

presence of an illustration can be largely attributed to correct responses to questions

which refer directly to the content of the illustration. Any interconnections which

may have formed between the verbal and nonverbal stores in memory were not

sufficient for the content of the illustration to have a positive effect upon the

comprehension and recall of the text. There appear to be circumstances under

which certain types of illustrations do result in improved comprehension of text

(see Schallert, 1980), but perhaps the most pragmatic approach is one which

considers them as providing information in their own right rather than as adjuncts

to the content of associated text.

Experiment 1 38

A comparison of performance on those items which referred specifically to content

presented in illustration, showed better performance for students who received it

both in the illustration and in the rewritten text. This result might be expected

simply due to double processing of the material. That is, the superior condition

received the same content twice whereas the students in the other two groups were

presented with the content only once. However, when discussing a similar result

by Rohwer and Harris (1975), Schallert (1980) suggested that it was more likely

that better comprehension and recall resulted from the provision of two access

routes to comprehension (i.e. text and illustration). This notion is consistent with

the interpretations of Paivio's (1971, 1986) dual coding theory and Craik and

Tulving's (1975) idea of breadth of processing of memory discussed in the

introduction, but the question of mere repetition versus dual access routes remains

to be examined in detail.

The results did not detect an advantage for content presented only in an illustration

over the same content presented in text. Dual coding theory and depth of

processing formulation of memory would predict a difference of this kind and it has

been reported in studies such as Donald, 1983; Lesgold et al., 1977; Lesgold et al.,

1975; Rasco, Tennyson & Boutwell, 1975; Reid et al., 1983; and Reinking et al.,

1988. The obtained difference was in the direction of the hypothesis and it will be

examined further in the studies that follow.

Experiment 2 39

Experiment 2

In the first experiment content presented in both text and illustration resulted in

superior performance. This is an interesting result and it raises the question of

whether the improvement was due to simple repetition of the content or to more

elaborate cognitive operations initiated by providing two different access routes to

the comprehension of the information (Schallert, 1980). Both dual coding theory

(Paivio, 1971, 1986) and depth and breadth of processing formulation of memory

(Craik & Lockhart, 1972, Craik & Tulving, 1975) would suggest that the same

content presented both as text and as illustration should be recalled and

comprehended better than if repeated in one form only and this proposition is the

main focus of this study. Presenting content as text or as illustration will be

investigated further as it was predicted from the theoretical discussion on dual

coding theory that technical illustrations· are likely to be comprehended better than

text of the same content. It is also of interest to see if any differences found on

immediate comprehension and recall change over time and so performances on

immediate and delayed comprehension and recall will be examined to see if any

differences obtained hold up over time.

Method

Subjects.

One hundred and thirty boys who study geography in Years 10, 11 and 12 at a

high school in Sydney took part in this study. Five groups with twenty-six

students in each were selected on the basis of their geography test results from

the mid year assessment for the Year 10 students and their progressive HSC

geography Assessment for the Year 11 and 12 students. They were assigned to

the groups so that each group was of equal ability in geography. At the end of

Experiment 2

this assignment process the resulting mean scores for Groups 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on

their geography assessments were 58.7, 57.3, 58.4, 60.9 and 60.1 respectively.

Not surprisingly an analysis of variance indicated these small differences did not

approach significance [F(4,125)=0.21, p>.05], that is, the groups did not differ

at the commencement of this study. The numbers of students in each group

from Year 12, Year 11 and Year 10 were respectively for Group 1 six, eleven

and nine; for Groups 2 and 5 these student numbers were seven, seven and

twelve respectively; for Group 3 six, nine and eleven; and for Group 4 these

student numbers were five, eleven and ten. The students ranged in age from

15.0 years to 19.3 years (mean age 16.6 years).

Desiw

40

Comprehension of information was examined under five presentation conditions.

In three of these conditions some of the content was repeated as can be observed in

Figure 4. In the case of the illustrations this meant that the content repeated was an

exact repetition. This was also the case for the repeated text - the content repeated

was an exact repetition. With the content repeated in two forms the content was

presented as text and illustration. Care was taken to ensure that the content of this

material was as close as possible when translated from illustration to text. Three

geography teachers and the dux student of Year 12 at the high school where the

Experiment was conducted judged the content of each text to be very similar to the

illustration it represented. Peripheral to the main design concerned with the

repeated material there was unique material appearing both prior to and after the

repeated material as can be seen in Figure 4. There were five groups of subjects

with one to each condition.

Experiment 2 41

Figure 4: The five presentation conditions in Experiment 2

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group S

Illustration 1 Illustration 2 ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ··--···· ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, --------,,,,,,,,

Repeated ,,,,,,,, --------,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ··-····· ,,,,,,,, content ,,,,,,,, --------,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, --------,,,,,,,,

I I ,,,,,,,, --------,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, --------

Te.xt1 Te.xt2 ,,,,,,,, --------,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ........ ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,

Repeated --------,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, --------,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, content --------,,,,,,,, --------,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,

T T ,,,,,,,, --------,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ........ ,,,,,,,,

Illustration 1 Te.xt2 ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,

Repeated content

I T

Illustration

Repeated content

pre.s ented once.

I

Text

Repeated content

presented once.

T

----···-----------------........ ----------------........ --------------------·-·· -------· ------------···-------------------------

Key:

mJ Unique. prior

f-:-:-J Unique. after

Experiment 2 42

Group 1 viewed two illustrations (II) in which 50% of each illustration was a

direct repeat of the content of half of the other illustration

Group 2 read two texts (TI) in which 50% of the content was repeated. The

actual content of the texts was the information in the two illustrations

used with Group 1 rewritten.

Group 3 was given the first illustration presented to Group 1 and the second text

presented to Group 2. As can be seen in Figure 4 this resulted in the

repeated material being presented in two forms - illustration and text

(TI).

Group 4 was given the illustrated material which was repeated with Group 1 as

one illustration (I).

Group 5 was given the repeated content only presented as text (T). This text was

identical with the repeated portion_ of the texts Group 2 read.

Re.peated material:

The main design of the study refers to the repeated material which Groups 1, 2 and

3 had repeated and which was produced only once for Groups 4 and 5. The same

content was presented to all groups. Comparisons between groups on the

comprehension of this material were made on immediate recall, then after a week

and then a month after reading the material. With the repeated materials for the first

three groups the effects of presenting the same information in different ways could

be examined. With these groups a comparison could be made on the type of

duplication of the material - Group 1 with the information duplicated in illustrative

form (II), Group 2 with the information duplicated in written form (TT) and Group

3 with the duplicated information in illustrative and written form (TI). The effects

of having the duplicated material in the illustration only once (I) and the text only

once (T), that is, the content was not repeated, were examined by having Groups 4

and 5. In line with the introductory discussion comparisons were made with

Experiment2 43

repeated text and repeated illustrations as well as a combination of content repeated

as text and illustration. In view of the discussion and consistent with the results

obtained in the first study the following comparisons were planned for the

iDlJTIMiate and delayed recall scores:

1. Repetition in two forms (TI) with repetition in single form (1T and II);

2. Repetition (II and TI') with single presentation (I and T);

3. Presentation in text (1T and T) with presentation in illustration (II and I).

These comparisons were carried out as planned comparisons on firstly immediate

recall and secondly for delayed recall. The same multiple choice tests were

administered again a week later to see if there was any presentation condition which

resulted in superior longer term comprehension. This procedure was also repeated

a month after reading the materials.

UniQ.ue material:

In addition to the overall design with repeated material there was material presented

which was not duplicated for Groups 1, 2 and 3. This allowed for further

comparisons of differences in presentation for the non-repeated material of text and

illustration and a comparison of any spinoff from the presence an illustration upon

the comprehension of text (a replication of the comparison which promoted

Experiment 1, i.e. the implicit assumption that illustrations improve the

comprehension of associated text). The advantage for illustrations was examined

by comparing Groups 1 (I) and 3 (I) with Group 2 (T). The advantage for an

illustration on an illustrated text would be noted on the unique material after the

repeated material by comparing Group 3 with Group 2 and so the performance of

these groups was contrasted. These two comparisons were designed to apply to

immediate recall and the delayed condition one week later.

Experiment 2

Materials

Group 1 was given two cross sections (II) drawn by the author which had a

50% overlap with each other (i.e. the second half of the first cross

section was repeated in the first half of the second cross section).

Group 2 was given two texts (TT) which were written by the author

containing information as close as possible to being the same as the

illustrations. The first text was 272 words in length and the

second 282 words in length.

Group 3 had the first illustration which Group 1 had and the second text of

Group 2. In other words, for Group 3 the information

overlapping in the illustration and text appeared in two forms - text

and illustration (TI).

Group 4 was given only the portion of the two illustrations which

overlapped once (I).

Group 5 had only the portion of the text which overlapped once (T).

44

For the repeated material great care was taken to translate the illustrations into text

so that the text was as close as possible in content to the illustration from which it

was translated. The same care was taken with the unique material appearing before

and after the repeated content where illustrations had to be translated into text. As

previously noted the end results for the repeated material (TT, Il, and TI) were

judged to be equivalent by three experts as was the unique material prior to the

repeated material (I, T, and I) and the unique material after the repeated material (I,

T and T).

The reading materials for all groups consisted of three quarto pages. Page 1 had

instructions on it, page 2 was blank and page 3 had the material to be read on it.

Page 2 was blank to ensure that students were not able to see through the first page

Experiment 2 45

and view any material they were to read on the last page - either text or illustration.

The reading material for each group was on one page. All text was prepared using

Apple Macintosh "Times" 12 point typestyle.

Thirty-five multiple choice items were constructed to measure students'

comprehension of information for Groups 1, 2 and 3. The test of comprehension

and recall was presented separately on eight quarto pages. It consisted of

instructions, a blank page and the multiple choice items. Students recorded their

responses on an answer sheet Twenty items were based upon the unique material

in the illustrations or their equivalent texts with ten of those items for the material

that preceded the duplicated material and ten items for the material that followed the

duplicated material. There were fifteen items based on the repeated material

common to both illustrations or their equivalent texts. These items were

randomized. Groups 4 and 5 were presented with and did the fifteen questions

based upon the repeated material only. Five experienced geography teachers

judged the content of the questions to be valid and using Bloom et al's. (1956)

taxonomy of the cognitive domain to classify each question the experts found that

with both sets of ten items on the two lots of unique materials nine tested

knowledge and one comprehension. For the fifteen items on the repeated material

fourteen were judged to test knowledge and one comprehension. A copy of the

reading materials and multiple choice items used in this Experiment is in Appendix

3.

Procedure

The Experiment was conducted in one teaching period of 50 minutes for each of the

six classes that participated. Upon entering the geography room the students were

instructed to sit at the desks which had been separated. Once all students were

seated they were told: "We will be doing a geography reading comprehension

Experiment 2 46

exercise today and there will be a multiple choice test to do at the end of the reading

time based upon the material you are about to read. During this period you will be

reading some material and doing a test under exam conditions with no interaction

with other students. You are to follow all instructions. The reading material will

be placed flat on the desk in front of you - you are not to move it. You will be

given either five or two minutes reading time depending upon the group you are in

and at the end of this time the reading material will be taken up from you and you

will then do the test." Each student was then given the material for the group to

which he had been assigned. The reading materials consisted of three quarto

pages. Page 1 had instructions on it, page 2 was blank and page 3 had the material

to be read on it. Page 2 was blank to ensure that students were not able to see

through the first page and view any material they were to read on the last page.

Once the appropriate reading material was distributed to each student in the class the

instructions on the front were read aloud by the investigator:

" 1. When instructed to do so, turn the first page and the blank page to page 3 of

this paper. Carefully read the material. You will be given five minutes reading

time for Groups 1, 2 and 3 and two minutes reading time for Groups 4 and 5.


3. You are only to read this material and you are not permitted to have any writing

or other implement (ruler, calculator, etc.) in your hand during the reading

time.

4. You may not ask questions about the reading material once the reading time

has commenced.



The students in Groups 1, 2 and 3 were then told "commence reading". After three

Experiment 2 47

minutes had passed Groups 4 and 5 were told to "commence reading". At the end

of the five minutes reading time for Groups 1, 2 and 3 and two minutes for Groups

4 and 5 (previous experience had indicated that this was sufficient), the students

were told to cease reading and close the reading material up so that it was left flat on

the desk with page one at the front ready to be collected. The reading material was

then collected and the multiple choice items and associated answer sheet distributed.

Students were instructed to leave this test flat on the desk. For Groups 1, 2 and 3

the test consisted of six quarto pages. Page 1 had instructions on it, page 2 was

blank and page 3 on had the thirty-five multiple choice items. Page 2 was blank to

ensure that students were not able to see through the first page and view any of the

multiple choice items. Groups 4 and 5 had a test paper with a similar format but

with only the fifteen items based upon the repeated material. The instructions on

page 1 of the multiple choice tests were read aloud:

"1. On the Answer Sheet write your name, class and age in the spaces provided

and then put your pen down.

2. Read the directions on the Answer Sheet carefully.

3. When instructed to do so turn the first page and the blank page to page 3 of

this test and answer the questions in the multiple choice test. These items are

based upon the material which you have just read. You will be given sufficient

time to complete all questions (approximately 20 minutes for Groups 1, 2 and

3 and 10 minutes for Groups 4 and 5)."

The experimenter then infonned students that :

"I will ensure that everyone has sufficient time to complete all the questions. You

may start the test now." Once all students in Groups 4 and 5 had completed all

fifteen items in their multiple choice test the investigator instructed them, "Students

in Groups 4 and 5 put your pens down and close up the test. It will be collected

when the other groups have finished their test". Once all students in Groups 1, 2

Experiment2 48

and 3 had completed all thirty-five items in their multiple choice test the investigator

instructed them, "put your pens down and close up the test. All tests and Answer

Sheets will now be collected".

One week later each of the five groups were required to redo the same multiple

choice test as they had done at the end of the reading time. This time the students

did not have the reading materials to read first as the purpose of redoing the delayed

test was to see what effects if any there were of the different types of reading

materials upon longer term comprehension. Each student was given a copy of the

test appropriate to their group and required to complete their answers on the same

type of answer sheet they had used the previous week. The same instructions on

page 1 of the multiple choice tests were read aloud and the experimenter then

informed students that everyone would have sufficient time to complete all the

questions. The students then answered the multiple choice items and the test papers

and answer sheets were collected from all students at the end of the test

One month after reading the materials each of the five groups were required to redo

the fifteen items on the repeated material on the multiple choice test on the reading

material they had read a month earlier. The students did not have the reading

materials to read as the purpose of redoing the test a month later was to see what

effects if any there were of the different types of reading materials upon longer term

comprehension. Each student was given a copy of the fifteen item test and required

to complete their answers on the same type of answer sheet they had used for the

two earlier tests. The same instructions on page 1 of the multiple choice tests were

read aloud and the experimenter then informed students that everyone would have

sufficient time to complete all the questions. The students then answered the

multiple choice items and the test papers and answer sheets were collected from all

students at the end of the test.

Experiment 2 49

Results

The results of this experiment are reported in two separate sections. The first deals

with the reading material which was common to all groups and is designated as

"repeated material" for the presentation of the results and the discussion of these.

The second section reports the results of student performances on the material

appearing before and after the repeated material which Groups 1, 2 and 3 had and is

designated as "unique material" for the presentation of the results and the discussion

of these.

Repeated Material:

Performance on the fifteen items based on the information repeated in the reading

material for the three tests (one immediately after reading the material, a repeat of

that test one week later without reading the material and another repeat of the test

one month later without reading the material), can· be seen in Figures 5, 6 and 7

(Table 3 shows the means and standard deviations of those results). The most

obvious results from viewing the three figures are that Group 4 appears to have

consistently outperformed the other groups and there is an expected decline over

time in performance. However, there were other differences.

Experiment 2 50

Figure 5: Percentage correct for each of five groups of subjects on

questions referring to the repeated information on

immediate recall

70

60

% 50 correct

LIO

30

0 Text Text

Text Illustration Illustration

Illustration Text Illustration


questions referring to the repeated information on delayed

recall of one week

70

60

% 50 correct

40

30

0 Text Text

Text Illustration Illustration Illustration

Text Illustration

Experiment 2 51


questions ref erring to the repeated information on delayed

recall of one month

70

60

% so correct

40

30

0 Text Text Text

Illustration Illustration

Illustration Text Illustration

Experiment 2 52


for repeated information in illustrations in Experiment 2

Group 1

(Il)

Group2

('IT)

Group 3

(11)

Group4

(I)

Groups

(I)

immediately after

reading material a week later a month later

Avemge

Mean Standard Mean Standard Mean Standard of Mean

% correct Deviation % correct Deviation % comlCl Deviation % correct

43.3 17.6 40.5 18.1 37.2 15.2 40.3

34.6 17.0 36.4 16.9 32.3 14.4 34.4

47.7 18.4 40.8 19.3 36.9 20.8 41.8

65.1 14.8 55.9 16.6 52.1 14.4 57.7

47.2 16.2 39.2 18.7 31.8 13.9 39.4

47.6 42.6 38.1 42.7

For the immediate recall data the comparisons on proportions correct scores gave

the following results:

The comparison of the content presented in two forms (TI) with the two repeats in

the same form (TT and II) showed significantly better performance for repetition in

Experiment 2 53

two forms [F(l,125)=4.74, p<.05]. The comparison between the groups with the

content appearing twice (Groups 1 [II] and 2 [TI]) and the groups with the single

presentation of the same content (Groups 4 [I] and 5 [T]) reached significance

favouring the single presentations [F(l,125)=27.47, p<.01]. Observation of

Figure 5 suggests that the superiority of the single presentations over duplicated

presentations was primarily a result of a superior performance by the group in the

single illustration condition. Putting it another way, the single text condition was

not clearly superior to the repeated text condition. The comparison between the

groups with the content in text (Groups 2 [TI] and 5 [T]) with the groups with the

same content in illustration (Groups 1 [II] and 4 [I]) detected a significant

advantage for the illustrations [F(l,125)=16.43, p<.01].

One week later the two significant differences involving Group 4 detected on

immediate recall remained significant but the advantage for the mixed presentation

had not lasted over the week. The comparison between the groups with duplicated

information appearing twice (Groups 1 cm and 2 [TI]) and the groups with the

single presentation of the same information (Groups 4 [I] and 5 [T]) was significant

favouring the groups with the single presentation of information [F(l,125)=6.73,

p<.05] (as can be again seen in Figure 6 this is mainly due to the exceptional

performance of Group 4). With the comparison between the groups with the

information in text (Groups 2 [TI] and 5 [T]) with the groups with the same

information in illustration (Groups 1 [m and 4 [I]) a significant difference was

found favouring the groups with illustrations [F(l,125)=8.79, p<.01] (Figure 6

again indicates that this is mainly due to the superior performance of Group 4).

The comparison of the form of repetition comparing the average of Groups 1 (II)

and 2 (TT) with Group 3 (TI) was not significant [F(l,125)=0.30, p>.05].

The results obtained one month after reading the materials were the same as those

Experiment 2 54

obtained after a week. That is, the differences involving Group 4 were the only

ones remaining. The comparison between the groups with duplicated information

appearing twice (Groups 1 [II] and 2 [TI]) and the groups with the single

presentation of the same information (Groups 4 [I] and 5 [T]) was significant

favouring the groups with the single presentation of information [F(l,125)=5.39,

p<.05] (as can be seen in Figure 7 this is mainly due to the exceptional performance

of Group 4 ). With the comparison between the groups with the duplicated

information in text (Groups 2 [TI] and 5 [T]) with the groups with the same

information in illustration (Groups 1 [II] and 4 [I]) a highly significant difference

was found favouring the groups with illustrations [F(l,125)=16.51, p<.01]

(Figure 7 again indicates that this is mainly due to the superior performance of

Group 4). Neither of the other comparisons were significant. The comparison of

the form of repetition comparing the average of Groups 1 (II) and 2 (TI) with

Group 3 (TI) was not significant [F(l,125)=0.10, p>.05]. The only differences

that did hold up on delayed recall were those that have a comparison with the single

illustration condition and these may be due to some unique combination of material

and subjects. Delayed recall is examined further in Experiment 4.

UniQ.ue Material:

As noted in the design in addition to the repeated material in Groups 1 (II), 2 (TI)

and 3 (TI) there was material which appeared both before and after the repeated

material. With the unique information appearing prior to the repeated information

Group 1 had an illustration, Group 2 had similar information in text and Group 3

had the same illustration as Group 1. With the unique information appearing after

the repeated information Group 1 had an illustration, Group 2 had similar

information in text and Group 3 had the same text as Group 2. Group 3 therefore

had unique information in illustration then the repeated information then unique

Experiment 2 SS

information in text. Student comprehension of this material was measured

immediately after reading the material and again one week later. As previously

noted the analysis of the unique material is not central to the design of the study and

will be briefly reported on and discussed here as the main discussion will refer to

only the repeated material.

Previous research has suggested that illustrations may be more easily remembered

than text and that they may assist the comprehension of text. The two hypotheses

to be tested with the unique material were: That illustrations are remembered better

than texts; and that text with an illustration is remembered better than text without

an illustration (the first study did not support this hypothesis). The first hypothesis

can be tested by comparing the average Groups 1 (I) and 3 (I) with Group 2 (T) on

the unique information appearing prior to the repeated information. Observation of

Table 4 suggests that there is no significant difference between content presented as

text and the same content presented as illustration. This observation is supported

by statistical tests carried out on either tests of immediate recall or delayed recall one

week later which did not reach significance (respectively, [F(l,7S)=0.16, p>.0S]

and [F(l,7S)=0.32, p>.0S]). It is not clear why an advantage for illustrations was

not found. The absence of a difference favouring the illustrations appears aberrant

as it would be predicted from the theoretical argument and was found on the

analysis of the data on the repeated content. In the studies that follow the

comparison between illustrations and text will be examined further.

The second hypothesis was tested by comparing Group 2 (T) with Group 3 (T) on

the material appearing after the repeated information. Table 5 shows the means and

standard deviations of those results. This comparison did not reach significance for

immediate recall nor delayed recall one week later (respectively [F(l,75)=2.18,

p>.0S] and [F(l,7S)=2.88, p>.0S]). This result is consistent with the null finding

Experiment 2 56

in Experiment 1. It has been mentioned already that there are likely to be

circumstances under which illustrations do lead to improved comprehension of text.

The results of this study and Experiment 1 suggest that there is a strong possibility

that this improvement is due to overlap of content. Whilst the question of what

circumstances result in improved comprehension of text due to the presence of

illustrations could be examined further, this study and the ones that follow in this

section are primarily concerned with different types of repetition of content and

illustrations versus text of the same content.

Table 4: Proportions correct group means and standard deviations for

unique information prior to the repeated material in

Experiment 2

Group 1

(I)

Group2

(I)

Group3

(I)

Avmge

Immediate recall

Mean

% correct

42.3

40.4

35.0

39.2

Standard

Deviation

20.3

18.9

15.0

One week later

Avenge

Mean Standard of Mean

% correct Deviation % correct

42.7 18.0 42.5

35.4 15.0 37.9

32.3 13.1 33.7

36.8

Experiment2 57

Table S: Proportions correct group means and standard deviations

for unique information appearing after the repeated

material in Experiment 2

Immediate recall One weclc later

Average

Mean Standard Mean Standard of Mean

% correct Deviation % correct Deviation % correct

Group 1 37.3 22.2 35.0 21.6 36.2

(I)

Group2 32.7 17.3 31.2 12.8 32.0

(I)

Group3 41.2 22.3 40.0 20.8 40.1

(I)

Average 37.0 35.4

The proportions correct data for Experiment 2 are tabled in Appendix 4.

Discussion

A comparison of the form of repetition in the repeated material showed that the

combined form of illustration and text was superior to the single-forms of text and

text, and illustration and illustration. This superiority for the representation of the

same content in text and illustration over simple repetition in either of these forms

Experiment 2 58

suggests that the advantage for representations in two forms is the result of access

to content via separate routes and not simply due to direct repetition. Also, direct

repetition in the same form may be recognized as such and not processed in full

whereas the combined form of repetition is more likely to have both forms (text and

illustration) processed fully. As detailed in the introduction, Paivio's (1971, 1986)

dual coding theory suggests that content encoded in both the imaginal store and the

verbal store with resultant interactions between the two is likely to be

comprehended and recalled better than information encoded in one store only.

Therefore one could expect superior performance for mixed repetition. It is a result

predicted by Schallert (1980) and is consistent with notions of depth and breadth of

processing in memory (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Craik & Tulving, 1975) and dual

coding theory.

The overall comparison of the illustrative conditions (repeated illustration and single

illustration) with the two textual conditions (repeated text and single text)

demonstrated an advantage for the illustrations. As discussed in the introduction to

the experiments, the superiority of illustrations of the type used here over text

would be predicted by dual coding theory of memory (Paivio 1971, 1986) and

supported by both Baddeley's theory of working memory (Baddeley & Hitch,

1974, 1977; Baddeley, 1989) and depth of processing analysis of memory (Craik

& Lockhart, 1972). Specifically, dual coding theory argues that interacting verbal

and nonverbal stores increase comprehension and recall. The illustrations used in

the first section of this thesis had verbal labels on the drawings. While it is likely

that the pictorial content was predominantly stored in the nonverbal code, it is

probable that the labels were stored in both the verbal code and images of the labels

in the nonverbal code. That is, the labels were likely to have been stored in both

memory codes. In the case of the illustrations used in these studies when verbal

and nonverbal information is encoded interaction is probably facilitated, whereas

Experiment 2 59

for the text this is unlikely to be as strong as the predominant store in memory of

the text is likely to be verbal. The greater interaction of the two stores facilitated by

the illustrations can be conceived as causing greater depth or breadth of processing

of memory which also predicts superior performance.

The counter intuitive result in which single presentations were superior to double

presentations of content in this Experiment may be a consequence of either a unique

combination of subjects and material for the single illustration condition or due to

fewer cognitive resources being devoted to the double presentations. The

comparison between the single and double presentation of content carried out on the

repeated material did ignore the fact that the subjects in the three conditions with

repeats had in total more content to process (see Figure 4). That is, they had to

process the unique material as well, whereas the single conditions had no additional

content to process. The additional material for the double presentation conditions

may well have resulted in fewer cognitive resources being devoted to the repeated

material (Sweller, 1988, 1989) and as a consequence the subjects in these three

conditions were at disadvantage compared to the single conditions. Thus the

counter intuitive difference favouring the single presentations may not be due to the

advantage of presenting the material once only but rather as a consequence of

having three times as much original content as the conditions with single

presentations. The comprehension and recall of repeated content versus single

presentations will be examined further.

Experiment 3 60

Experiment 3

Although both dual coding theory (Paivio 1971, 1986) and the depth of processing

analysis of memory (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) implied that content presented in an

illustrated form may be comprehended better than the same content in text, the two

tests of this prediction conducted so far have produced contrasting results. That is,

the small advantage obtained for the illustration in the first experiment failed to

reach statistical significance but the second experiment on the repeated material did

support the prediction. In view of this contrast between the two studies the

comparison between content presented as an illustration and as text is replicated

here.

A counter-intuitive difference favouring conditions in which content was presented

only once over conditions which had that same content either as a repeated text or

as a repeated illustration was obtained in the second study. Observation of the data

showed the main contributor to this significant result was the high level of

performance of the group of students who viewed only the single illustration. As

previously suggested this is possibly a consequence of either a unique combination

of subjects and material or the amount of additional original content to be processed

by the conditions of repeated content interfering with the comprehension and recall

of the repeated material. Superior performance for a single presentation of content

over a repeated presentation in the same form was not predicted on the basis of the

cognitive theories discussed and this suggests that it may be a result of a random

difference between the groups. However, before concluding that this is the case

attempts will be made to replicate it with single and repeated presentations having

the same quantity of original content.

In comparing illustrations and text and single and repeated presentations the

Experiment 3 61

experimental procedure used in this study represents a break with the earlier studies

and in general with other similar work. Previous studies have usually varied the

learning conditions between groups of subjects. This method of presentation does

not take advantage of the fact that each individual usually performs in a similar

fashion relative to other individuals across similar cognitive tasks. That is, a

student who is better or worse than other students under one learning condition is

likely to be better or worse under other similar learning conditions (Bassett, Watts

& Nurcombe, 1978; Tyler, 1965). A procedure which presents each student with

all experimental treatments takes advantage of this consistency and in statistical

terms reduces the size of the error term used for testing differences between

treatments. This increases the sensitivity or power of the test (see Winer, 1971,

especially pages 261 and 262). Each student in this study was presented with

material under the four conditions examined.

Method

Subjects

Twenty-four boys in one class from Year 11 who study geography at a high school

in Sydney took part in this study. The students ranged in age from 16.4 years to

18.0 years (mean age 16.9 years) and were of mixed ability in geography (i.e. the

class was not streamed with more able or less able students based upon their past

performances in geography).

Desiw

Four lots of materials (Ml, M2, M3 and M4) judged to be of similar difficulty by

three experienced geography teachers were used with each one presented under one

of the experimental conditions (IT, T, Il and I). Condition TT used Ml, condition

T used M2, condition II used M3 and condition I used M4. The order of

Experiment 3 62

presentation of the four conditions was fully counterbalanced. There were twenty

four possible orderings of the four conditions and each student received one of the

possible twenty-four orderings. This experimental design was a repeated measures

design with the four types of presentation varied within subjects. Post learning

performance for conditions IT, T, II and I were tested on a set of multiple choice

items based on the content appearing in each material. The dependent measure was

performance on the eighty multiple-choice items in which twenty items each

referred to the content presented under each of the four conditions. The following

comparisons between the methods of presentation were planned for the analysis:

1. Repetition (IT and II) with single presentation (T and n; 2. Presentation in text (IT and T) with presentation in illustration (II and n.

The 24 possible orderings of the 24 unique combinations of conditions by material

were presented one to each subject. For each subject the same material appeared

only once under each condition. Each type of presentation appeared six times in

each order position and each type of material appeared each time in each condition.

This controlled for differences in difficulty among the four material types, e.g. if

Material 1 were in fact easier than Material 3 then its effect would be expected to be

similar under all four learning conditions and therefore the differences in difficulty

were counterbalanced over the conditions. This is illustrated in Table 6. For

example, student one received the conditions in the order of Ml (TT), M2 (T), M3

(II) then M4 (I), whereas student twenty-two received the conditions in the order of

M4 (I), M2 (T), Ml (TT), then M3 (II). The experimental design was a repeated

measures design with the four types of presentation varied within subjects. Post

learning performance for conditions IT, T, II and I were tested on a set of multiple

choice items based on the information appearing in each material.

Experiment 3 63

Table 6: Order of presentation of learning conditions

Student Order of Presentation

1 TI T n I

2 T n TI I

3 n I TI T

4 I TI T n 5 TI II I T

6 TI I T n 7 TI n T I

8 TI T I n 9 TI I n T

10 T TI n I

11 T n I TI

12 T I TI n 13 T I II TI

14 T TI I n 15 n TI T I

16 n TI I T

17 n T TI I

18 n T I TI

19 n I T TI

20 I n T TI

21 I n TI T

22 I T TI II

23 I T n TI

24 I TI n T

Materials

Considerable care was taken to make the four lots of material very similar as each

of the four conditions (1T, T, Il and I) had a different piece of content As noted

previously, the end result was assessed by three experts in geography who judged

the four materials to be very similar in geographical subject matter and difficulty.

One text and one illustration was presented once only (T and I) and the other text

Experiment 3 64

and illustration were repeated (TI and II). Both texts were 178 words in length.

Each of the four reading materials and associated tests consisted of eight quarto

pages stapled together (i.e. there were four lots of eight pages stapled together).

The content presented to students was preceded by the instructions followed by a

blank page (to prevent students from viewing the content through the instructions

page). The instructions for the test items followed and there was a blank page prior

to the test items. The blank pages ensured that students could not preview material.

All text was prepared using Apple Macintosh "Times" 12 point typestyle.

Twenty multiple choice items were constructed to measure students' comprehension

of information for each condition (text repeated, text once only, illustration repeated

and illustration once only). The eighty items within the four sets of twenty items

were randomized in the final format for the items. Three experienced geography

teachers assessed the reading materials and the items for each to be similar

respectively in content and difficulty. Using Bloom et al's. taxonomy (1956) to

classify each question the experts found that the twenty items for each of the four

lots of materials eighteen tested knowledge and two comprehension. A copy of the

reading materials and multiple choice items used in this Experiment is in Appendix

5.

Procedure

A Year 11 geography class was selected to conduct this Experiment within one

teaching period of 50 minutes. Upon entering the geography room the students

were instructed to move the desks apart and to be seated with no materials on the

desk except a pen or pencil with which to write. Once all students were seated they

were told: "You will be doing some geography reading comprehension exen::ises

today. You will all have four lots of material to read and then the multiple choice

items to do on each of the reading materials immediately after you have read the

Experiment 3 65

material. There will be no interaction with other students and you are to carefully

follow all instructions. When the four materials are placed on your desk leave them

there in the order they are placed. You are to read them in that exact order."

Reading materials for each student were then distributed in different order for each

student.

Once each student in the class had the four lots of reading materials and associated

tests in the different orders the instructions on page 1 were read aloud by the

experimenter:

11 1. When instructed to do so, tum the first page and the blank page to page 3 of

this paper. Carefully read the material. You will be given two minutes reading

time.




time.


upon the material you have read. 11

The students were then told "commence reading the material on the top of the four

lots of materials you have". At the end of the two minutes reading time (previous

experience had indicated that this was sufficient), the students were told to cease

reading and tum to page 4. The instructions on page 4 relating to the multiple

choice tests were read aloud:

"1. When instructed to do so tum the first page and the blank page to page 6. to

questions for this test and answer the 20 questions in the multiple choice test

These items are based upon the material which you have just read. You will be

given sufficient time to complete all questions (approximately 5 minutes).

Experiment 3 66

2. Circle the letter corresponding to the most correct alternative."



may tum to page 6 and start the test now." Once all students had completed their

first test they were instructed to: "Put your pens down and put the first reading

material and test face down on the desk. We will now read the second lot of

material. Read the instructions on page one - these are exactly the same as for the

first lot of reading materials (the students were given about 20 seconds to do this).

You may tum to page three and commence reading the material now." At the end

of the two minutes reading time the students were told to: "Cease reading and tum

to page 4 and read the instructions on page 4 relating to the multiple choice test.

These are the same as for the first test (the students were given about 15 seconds to

do this). You may turn to page six and commence the test now." The same

procedure was followed for the remaining two reading material and associated

tests.

Results and discussion

The performance on the twenty items can be seen in Figure 8 (Table 7 shows the

means and standard deviations of those results). The comparison between the

illustrations (II and I) and the text (TI and T) showed that the advantage which can

be seen for the former was significant [F(l,69)=14.60, p<.01]. This replicates the

finding in Experiment 2. It is consistent with the predictions based on dual coding

theory (Paivio 1971, 1986) and it suggests that the failure in the first study of the

observed advantage of illustrations to reach statistical significance was probably an

instance of accepting the null hypothesis when it is false.

Experiment 3 67

Figure 8: Percentage correct for the four presentation conditions

70

60

% 50 correct

40

30

0 Text Text Text

Illustration Illustration

Illustration

Experiment3 68

Table 7: Proportions correct means and standard deviations for the

four materials in Experiment 3

Material 1

(IT)

Material2

(T)

Material 3

(II)

Material4

(I)

Average

Mean

% correct

54.0

63.7

69.0

70.2

64.2

Standard

Deviation

18.1

18.0

14.1

16.5


Observation of the differences in Figure 8 suggests that the single text is better than

the duplicated text and that there is also a very small observed difference for the

single illustration over the duplicated illustration. Any significant difference of this

kind will be detected either in the comparison between the single presentations (T

and I) and the double presentations (TT and II) or as an interaction between this

comparison and the text versus illustration comparison. Both these comparisons

failed to reach significance (respectively [F(l,69)=3.75, p>.05] and

[F(l,69)=2.28, p>.05]). Given the significant advantage for the single over double

presentations in the second experiment, one is not yet in the position to confidently

accept the hypothesis of no difference between the conditions. The difference

Experiment 3 69

between single and repeated presentations in the same form will be examined

further.

Experiment 4 70

Experiment 4

Based on Paivio's (1971, 1986) dual coding theory of memory two principal

hypotheses were tested. The first of these was that technical illustrations should be

superior to text of the same content. The second was that repetition of content in

two forms (illustration and text) should be superior to single form repetition (either

illustration repeated or text repeated). In Experiments 2 and 3 the results showed

that the illustrations used were superior to text. The comparison in Experiment 2

between repetition of content in two forms (text and illustration) over single form

repetition (text repeated or illustration repeated) showed that repeating content in

two forms resulted in better comprehension and recall than single for repetition.

There was also a non-predicted result in Experiment 2 when single presentations

(text once or illustration once) were found to be superior to double presentations

(text repeated and illustration repeated).

There are no obvious theoretical arguments for predicting the advantage for single

presentations over repeated presentations in one form. The robustness of this

difference is examined further in this study, especially as the observed differences

were in the same direction in Experiment 3. As the advantage for the presentation

of content repeated in two forms compared to content repeated as text or as

illustration has only been directly tested in one study, this comparison is replicated

here. Also, for completeness further evidence is gained on the comparison between

illustration and text of the same content.

In educational research a question which is important but difficult to examine in

detail involves time: Does student performance improve if a particular strategy used

over a long period of instruction? It is usually assumed that small experimental

differences will translate into large effects in the classroom over a long period of

Experiment 4 71

time. While it is beyond the scope of this thesis to do longitudinal studies some

work was done in this area in Experiment 2 and this will be pursued further here.

In Experiment 2 the delayed recall trials were designed to see if any difference on

immediate recall held over time. However, in that study the only difference which

held up over time was with the group in the single illustration condition and this

may have been due to a non-systematic effect. As a consequence of this, delayed

recall will be examined in this study to see if the differences hold up. The design of

the study is again within subjects with the five different treatment conditions

presented to all subjects.

Method

Subjects

Twenty-five Year 10 geography boys in one class at a high school in Sydney took

part in this study. The students ranged in age from 1S.2S years to 17.0 years

(mean age 16.0 years) and were of mixed ability in geography (i.e. the class was

not streamed with more able or less able students based upon their past

petformances in geography).

Pesim

Five lots of materials (Ml, M2, M3, M4 and MS) judged to be of similar difficulty

by three experienced geography teachers were used with each one presented under

one of the experimental conditions (TT, T, II, I and TI). Condition TT used Ml,

condition T used M2, condition Il used M3, condition I used M4 and condition TI

used MS. The experimental design was a repeated measures design with the five

types of presentation varied within subjects. As before, the order of presentation of

the conditions was counterbalanced. This is illustrated in Table 8. For example,

student one receiveq the conditions in the order of Ml (TT), M3 (II), M4 (I), M2

Ex.periment4 72

(T) then M5 (TI), whereas student twenty-two received the conditions in the order

of M2 (T), M3 (II), M5 (TI), Ml (TI) then M4 (I). Post learning performance for

the conditions was tested on a set of multiple choice items based on the content

appearing in each material. The dependent measure was performance on the one

hundred multiple-choice items in which twenty items each referred to the content

presented under each of the five conditions. The same planned comparisons were

examined as in Experiment 2. That is,

1. Repetition in two forms (TI) with repetition in single form (TI and II);

2. Repetition (II and TI) with single presentation (I and T);

3. Presentation in text (TT and T) with presentation in illustration (II and I).

Experiment 4 73


Student Order of presentation

1 TI II I T TI

2 T TI TI I II

3 II TI TI I T

4 I II T TI TI

5 TI I II T TI

6 TI TI I II T

7 T I TI TI II

8 II TI T TI I

9 I II T TI TI

10 TI T I II TI

11 TI I T TI II

12 T I TI II TI

13 II T TI I TI

14 I TI II TI T

15 TI TI II T I

16 TI T TI I II

17 T TI II TI I

18 II I TI T TI

19 I T TI II TI

20 TI II I TI T

21 TI TI T I II

22 T II TI TI I

23 n T TI TI I

24 I TI n T TI

25 TI TI I II T

Materials

The same four materials were used in this study as in Experiment 3 and an

additional set of material for the condition TI carefully prepared so that it would be

Experiment 4 74

very similar to the other four materials4• The content of the illustration in this fifth

condition (TI) was carefully translated into text. The resultant text was 176 words

in length (the other text conditions in the reading materials were 178 words in

length), and it was judged by the three experts to be very similar in content to the

illustration. The format of the reading material and associated items was the same

as the other four materials. As noted previously the materials for each of the five

conditions (TI, T, II, I and TI) were judged to be similar in content and complexity

by three experienced geography teachers.

The same 20 multiple choice items used for each of the materials in Experiment 3

were used in this study to measure students' comprehension of information for each

of the conditions TI, T, II and I. Another twenty multiple-choice items were

constructed for the material in the combined illustration and text condition (TI).

Three experienced geography teachers analysed the multiple choice items to check

their content validity and that the questions in each set of items matched the

questions in the other four in terms of their difficulty of wording and that the

material being tested was very similar in all five sets of items. The items within

each twenty item test were not presented in sequence with the material, i.e. the

items were randomized. The major difference in treatments of the subjects was the

order of presentation of the reading materials. Using Bloom et al's. (1956)

taxonomy of the cognitive domain to classify each question in condition TI the

experts judged that eighteen tested knowledge and two comprehension. As

previously detailed this compared with eighteen items testing knowledge and two

comprehension for the other four materials. A copy of the reading materials and

4 Care was taken where reading materials were used in more than one experiment

to ensure that each student viewed materials not seen before by them in a

previous experiment

Experiment 4 75

multiple choice items used in Experiment 3 and this Experiment for conditions TI,

T, IT and I is in Appendix 5 and for condition TI is in Appendix 7.

Procedure

One Year 10 geography class was used to conduct this Experiment in one teaching

period of 50 minutes. Upon entering the geography room the students were

directed to sit at the desks which had been separated. Once all students were seated

they were informed: "We will be doing some geography reading comprehension

exercises today. You will all have five lots of material to read and a test to do on

each of the reading materials immediately after you have read that material. This is

to be done under exam conditions with no interaction with other students. You are

to follow all instructions. The reading materials will be collected by you from me

and you are to place them flat on the desk in front of you - you are not to open them

until instructed to do so and do ensure that you keep them in the order in which you

receive them. You will be given two minutes reading time and at the end of this

time you will then do a twenty item multiple choice test. Once everyone has

completed that test and you are instructed to do so, we will then start reading the

second lot of materials and do the test for that when instructed to do so and so on

for the remaining three lots of reading materials and tests " Reading materials for

each student were then distributed in a different order for each student.

Once each student in the class had the five lots of reading materials and associated

tests the instructions on the front were read aloud by the experimenter:

"1. When instructed to do so, turn the first page and the blank page to page 3 of


time.


Experiment 4 76



time.


upon the material you have read. 11

The students were then told "commence reading the material on the top of the five

lots of materials you have". At the end of the two minutes reading time (previous


reading and to tum to page 4. The instructions on page 4 relating to the multiple


11 1. When instructed to do so tum the first page and the blank page to page 6 to

questions for this test and answer the 20 questions in the multiple choice test.



2. On the Answer Sheet provided fill in the circle around the letter corresponding

to the most correct alternative.

3. You may nm refer back to the reading material when you are doing the test

4. Do not mark the pages in this question sheet in any way."

The experimenter then informed students:







You may tum to page 3 and commence reading the material now." At the end of the

Experiment 4 77

two minutes reading time the students were told to: "C.ease reading and tmn to page

4 and read the instructions on page 4 relating to the multiple choice test. These are

the same as for the first test and you may re-read them now if you wish (the

students were given about 15 seconds to do this). You may tmn to page six and

commence the test now." The same procedure was followed for the remaining

three lots of reading materials and associated tests.

A week later the students were given the multiple choice items without the reading

material. Once all students were seated the experimenter informed the students that

they were redoing the tests to see what they may recall of the material they had read

a week earlier. The multiple choice items and answer sheet were then distributed

and the instructions on the first set of items read aloud. Students were then asked

to do the five sets of multiple choice items (this took approximately 20 minutes).

The same procedure was used a month after the students had read the materials.

Results

The percentage correct recall scores for each of the treatment conditions for the three

tests (one immediately after reading the material, a repeat of that test one week later

without reading the material and another repeat of the test one month later without

reading the material), can be seen in Figures 9, 10 and 11 (Table 9 shows the

means and standard deviations of those results). While there are other differences

detected by the analysis, the obvious difference from viewing the three figures is

that there is an expected decline over time in performance.

Experiment 4 78

Figure 9: Percentage correct for the fi ve presentation conditions for

the tests done immediately after viewing materials

70

60

% so correct

~o

30

0 Text Text Text

Illustration Illustration Illustration

Text Illustration

Experiment 4 79

Figure 10: Percentage correct for the five presentation conditions for

the tests done one week after viewing materials

70

60

% 50 correct

t::10

30

0 Text Text Text


Text Illustration

Figure 11: Percentage correct for the five presentation conditions

for the tests done one month after viewing materials

70

60

% 50 correct

40

30

0 Text Text Text


Text Illustration

Experiment 4 80


five presentation conditions in Experiment 4 for test done

immediately after reading the material, one week later and

one month later

Material 1

(TT)

Material 2

(I)

Material 3

(Il)

Material4

(I)

Material 5

{TI)

immediarely aftez

reading material a week later a month later

Average

Mean Standard Mean Standard Mean Standmd of Mean

% correct Deviation % correct Deviation % correct Deviation % correct

60.2 20.4 38.2 16.6 37.8 13.5 45.4

64.8 18.1 35.8 18.5 35.0 14.2 45.2

68.2 19.7 32.8 13.5 36.4 13.8 45.8

68.8 21.0 35.0 15.7 32.0 10.7 45.3

75.8 17.0 34.2 15.7 33.6 11.9 47.9

For immediate recall the following comparisons were made on proportions correct

scores:

The comparison between the texts (IT and T) and illustrations (II and I) showed

Experiment 4 81

that the advantage for the illustrations was significant [F(l,96)=4.29, p<.05]. This

result replicates the findings reported in Experiments 2 and 3 and it is predicted by

the theoretical argument in the general introduction. It appears to be the case that

when technical content lends itself to being presented both in illustration and in text

the former results in better comprehension and recall. The replication of content in

text and illustration (TI) gave superior performance to direct replication in text (TI)

or direct replication in illustration (II) [F(l,96)=10.68, p<.01]. This result is

consistent with the good performance of this condition observed in Experiment 1

and it replicates the finding obtained in Experiment 2. There was no significant

difference between the single presentation conditions and repeated conditions in the

same fonn [F(l,96)=0.80, p>.05]. This result is consistent with the same

comparison made in the last study and in the absence of any straight forward

theoretical argument predicting an advantage for single presentations it suggests that

the significant advantage obtained in Experiment 2 was an instance of rejecting the

null hypothesis when it was in fact true.

One week later none of the significant differences detected on imm~ate recall

remained significant That is:

The comparison of texts (TT and T) with illustrations (II and I) was not

significant [F(l,96)=1.85, p>.05].

The comparison of the form of repetition (TI with TT and m was not significant

[F(l,96)=0.22, p>.05].

The comparison between the double presentations in the same form (TT and m and the the single presentations (T and I) was not significant

[F(l,96)=0.002, p>.05].

Experiment 4 82

One month later the results remained unchanged from those of a week - there were

no significant differences remaining. That is:

The comparison of texts (TT and T) with illustrations (II and I) was not

significant [F(l,96)=1.34, p>.05].

The comparison of the form of repetition (TI with TT and II) was not significant

[F(l,96)=2.27, p>.05].

The comparison between the double presentations in the same form (TT and II)

and the the single presentations (T and I) was not significant

[F(l,96)=3.60, p>.05].


Discussion

Illustrations were again found to be superior to text of the same content. As

previously noted this result is predicted by Paivio's (1971, 1986) dual coding

theory of memory and is consistent with Craik and Lockhart's (1972) depth of

processing analysis of memory. The result is also consistent with Baddeley and his

colleagues (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974, 1977; Baddeley, 1988, 1989) concept of

working memory. It is a reliable and replicable finding and suggests that when

technical content lends itself to being presented either in the form of illustration or

as text the former presentation results in better comprehension and recall.

The combined form of duplication (text and illustration) was superior to duplication

in the same form (either text repeated or illustration repeated). This replicated the

result obtained in Experiment 2 and is consistent with the good performance

observed under this condition in Experiment 1. It is again a result predicted by

both dual coding theory (Paivio 1971, 1986) and is consistent with depth of

Experiment 4 83

processing theory of memory (Craik: & Lockhart, 1972) and the concept of

working memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974, 1977; Baddeley, 1988, 1989).

Schallert ( 1980) observed that improved comprehension under these conditions

was probably a result of the dual access to content (text and illustration) for any

overlapping content. She suggested that simple repetition in either text or

illustration of the content was unlikely to lead to substantial improvements in

comprehension and these results indicate that this is indeed the case.

There was no significant difference between the single presentation conditions (text

once and illustration once) and repeated conditions in the same form ( text repeated

and illustration repeated). This comparison was made in the study because of the

significant result obtained in Experiment 2. There were no obvious theoretical

reasons for the significant difference in that study and the absence of a reliable

difference here indicates that the result in Experiment 2 was perhaps due to the

nature of the single illustration condition, the students in that condition or a unique

combination of material and students. It is reasonable to now suspect that in

Experiment 2 we have an instance of rejecting the null hypothesis when it was in

fact true. This lends support to the notion that, where it is possible, experimental

results should be replicated in a series of studies before reporting the findings.

Certainly the persistence here in examining further a result in one study which has

no obvious theoretical base and is counter-intuitive has proven worthwhile.

In this study the differences found on immediate recall did not bold up over time. It

should be recognized that this does not necessarily mean that adopting presentation

formats which have positive effects on immediate recall will not have longer term

effects. Indeed it is quite possible that the advantage would be maintained and

increased if learning ·occurred over a long period of time. That is, the adoption of

the advantageous presentation of repeating important content in two forms (text and

Experiment 4 84

illustration) may lead to a substantial improvement in performance over a lengthy

period of instruction such as a year. However, what these results do suggest is that

immediate gains are not maintained at a reliable level without further reinforcement.

In this study the students viewed the materials once and later did delayed trials

without further learning. It is perhaps not surprising that the differences were too

small to be statistically significant when one considers the cognitive activity and

amount of material students would learn over a week and a month between reading

the material and the memory trials. The results also indicate that performance on

the delayed trials may be at floor level. Although it is beyond the scope of this

thesis, these arguments suggest that a question as important and as complex as this

needs to be tested with a longitudinal teaching programme.

On the face of it the results of the first four studies would suggest that the

presentation of content in two forms (text and illustration) is superior to simple

repetition in one form (either text presented twice or illustration presented twice),

and that technical illustrations are better than text in depicting spatial information

which can be expressed in either form. However, in this experiment and

Experiment 3 the materials used were presented under only one experimental

condition. That is, for example, while there were five different contents used in

this study the first content appeared under condition illustration illustration, the

second under text text, the third illustration, the fourth text and the fifth content

appeared under condition text illustration. This method of presentation allowed for

the possibility that the differences obtained were due to differences in the difficulty

of content and not due to differences in its form of presentation. This was unlikely

to be the case as the materials were judged by experts to be equivalent and the same

experts judged the test items to be of equivalent difficulty and to be measuring the

same objectives. Confidence in this regard is also supported by the results obtained

in Experiment 2 where illustrations were superior to text and repetition in two

Experiment 4 85

forms was superior to single form repetition. In that study the same content was

used under all conditions and variation was between groups of students. Materials

in Experiments 3 and 4 were closely monitored to ensure that they were equivalent

within each experiment. However, for prudential reasons and experimental

thoroughness, given the possibility of a confounding of presentation format and

content differences these two variables were fully counterbalanced for presentation

in the next study.

Experiment 5 86

Experiment 5

The results of Experiments 3 and 4 were consistent with the findings in Experiment

2 and suggested that illustrations were superior to text in depicting spatial content

and that presenting the same content in two forms (text and illustration) was

superior to simple repetition in one form (text repeated or illustration repeated). As

has been pointed out considerable care was taken to make levels of difficulty similar

across content in each of these experiments and experts judged the end results to be

very similar. However, as discussed, there was a possibility of confounding

presentation format and content difficulty in the third and fourth studies and as a

consequence this question is examined directly here. In this experiment the five

materials are each presented in all five formats (text repeated, text once, illustration

repeated, illustration once and text/illustration) in a fully counterbalanced repeated

measures design.

Method

Subjects

Twenty-five boys in one class from Year 9 who study geography at a high school

in Sydney took part in this study. The students ranged in age from 14.0 years to


class was not streamed with more able or less able students based upon their passed

performances in geography).

Desim-

As in Experiment 4, the effects of the form of presentation of content on

comprehension were examined under five conditions using five different materials.

However, all twenty-five combinations of materials by conditions were used. That

Experiment 5 87

is, each material was presented as TI, T, II, I and TI and each material was

presented the same number of times in each of these conditions. The order of

presentation of the combinations of treatments by materials was counterbalanced

using a Latin Square design (Ferguson, 1981, p. 343). The treatments by

materials combinations and their order for each of the twenty-five students is

shown in Table 10. For example, student one read Material A under the first

condition (TI) first, Material B under the second condition (T), Material C under

the third condition (m, Material D under the fourth condition (I), and Material E

under the fifth condition (TI), whereas student twenty-two read Material B under

the fifth condition (TI) first, Material C under the first condition (TT), Material D

under the second condition (T), Material E under the third condition (II) and

Material A under the fourth condition (I). This allowed the examination of the

effects of presenting similar information in five different ways - TI, T, II, I and

TI.

Experimem5 88


Student Order of Presentation

1 TIA TB IIC ID TIE

2 TIB TC IID IE TIA

3 TIC 1D IIE IA TIB

4 TID 1E 11A m TIC

5 TIE TA 11B IC 11D

6 TA 11B IC 11D TIE

7 TB IIC ID TIE TIA

8 TC IID IE TIA TIB

9 1D IIE IA TIB TIC

10 1E 11A m TIC TID

11 11A m TIC TID 1E

12 11B IC 11D TIE TA

13 IIC ID TIE TIA TB

14 IID IE TIA TIB TC

15 IIE IA TIB TIC 1D

16 IA TIB TIC 1D IIE

17 m TIC TID 1E 11A

18 IC 11D TIE TA 11B

19 ID TIE TIA TB IIC

20 IE TIA TIB TC IID

21 TIA TIB TC IID IE

22 TIB TIC 1D IIE IA

23 TIC TID 1E 11A m 24 11D TIE TA 11B IC

25 TIE TIA TB nc ID

Table note: A, B, C, D and E refer to the five materials and TT, T, II, I and TI to

the five conditions - respectively text repeated, text once, illustration

repeated, illustration once and text and illustration.

Experiment 5 89

The experimental design was a repeated measures design with the five types of

presentation varied within subjects. Post learning performance for conditions was

tested on a set of multiple choice items based on the content appearing in each

material. The dependent measure was the proportion correct responses for each

condition on a twenty item multiple choice test. The same planned comparisons

were examined as in Experiments 2 and 4. That is,

1. Repetition in two forms (TI) with repetition in single form (IT and II);

2. Repetition (II and TT) with single presentation (I and T);

3. Presentation in text (IT and T) with presentation in illustration (II and I).

Materials

Selected materials from the previous studies were adapted and used. Material A

was adapted from the water cycle content presented in Experiment 1, Material B

was adapted from a cross section presented in Experiment 2 and Materials C, D and

E were all used in Experiment 4 (Materials C and D had been previously used in

Experiment 3 as well). As all materials appeared an equal number of times under

each condition it was possible to assess whether or not the experts' judgements of

equivalence in difficulty for Materials C, D and E were accurate. It should be

pointed out, however, that should there be any differences in difficulty among these

three materials or any of the five materials, that this would have no impact upon the

interpretation of th~ results of this study.

Each of the five lots of reading materials had five presentation formats - TI, T, II,

I and TI. The same twenty multiple choice items which were used with each of

these materials in the earlier studies to measure comprehension of the content

presented were again used here. The content presented to students was preceded

by the instructions followed by a blank page (to prevent students from viewing the

content through the instructions page). The instructions for the test items followed

Experiment 5 90

and there was a blank page prior to the test items. The blank pages ensured that

students could not preview material. A copy of the reading materials and associated

multiple choice items may be found in Appendix 9.

Procedure

This Experiment was conducted in sixty minutes. Once all students were seated in

the room they were told: "Today we will be doing five geography reading

comprehension exercises. There will be a multiple choice test to do at the end of

the reading time for each material based upon that material. You will all have five

lots of material bundled together with a clip on them. You will be given a bundle

and five answer sheets on which to record your answers. Ensure that you read the

materials in the order you receive them in that bundle starting with the top lot of

material. During this period you will be reading some material and doing a test

under exam conditions with no interaction with other students. You are to follow

all instructions. You will be given two minutes reading time and at the end of this

time you will then do a twenty item multiple choice test based upon what you have

just read. Once everyone has completed that test and you are instructed to do so,

we will then start reading the second lot of materials and do the test for that when

instructed to do so and so on for the remaining three lots of reading materials and

tests. 11 Reading materials for each student were then distributed in different order

for each student.

Once each student in the class had the five lots of reading materials and associated


experimenter:

11 1. When instructed to do so, turn the first page and the blank page to page 3 of


time.

Experiment 5 91




time.



The students were then told "commence reading the material on the top of the five

lots of materials you have". At the end of the two minutes reading time (previQus


reading and turn to page 4. The instructions on page 4 relating to the multiple


"1. When instructed to do so turn the first page and the blank page to page 6 to

questions for this test and answer the 20 questions in the multiple choice test.



2. Circle the letter cOITCsponding to the most cOITCCt alternative."








You may tum to page three and commence reading the material now." At the end

of the two minutes reading time the students were told to: "Cease reading and tum

to page 4 and read the instructions on page 4 relating to the multiple choice test.

Experiment 5 92

These are the same as for the first test (the students were given about 15 seconds to

do this). You may tum to page six and commence the test now." The same

procedure was followed for the remaining three lots of reading materials and

associated tests.


Each subject read and responded to all five materials. The fully counterbalanced

repeated measures design of this study overcame any possible confounding of

materials and conditions. Therefore it is possible to ignore the treatment variable of

presentation format and analyse the data as though the treatment variable was only

materials. So prior to the main comparison of presentation formats, a comparison

of performances on materials is of interest as it allows for a retrospective validation

of the equivalence of materials used in Experiments 3 and 4 made by experts.

Specifically, Materials labelled C and D used in this study had previously been

judged to be equivalent by experts in Experiment 3, and in Experiment 4 Material E

was judged to be of equivalent difficulty to Materials C and D. The materials

labelled A and B were new to this study and because of the fully counterbalanced

design there was no need to assess their difficulty and comparisons reported on

these have no bearing on these or earlier reported results.

ColJlParison of materials

The proportional correct data are shown in Figure 12 (the proportions correct

means and standard deviations for the five materials are shown in Table 11). These

data suggest that there was no difference in performances on the three materials

previously judged to be equivalent in difficulty - Materials C, D and E. Student

performance on Material C was compared with Material D and there was no

significant difference [F(l,99)==0.00, p>.05]. The average performance on

Experiment 5 93

Materials C and D was compared with Material E and this was not significant

[F(l,99)=0.00, p>.05]. Little difference in performance on Materials A and B can

be observed in Figure 12 and the comparison between these two materials did not

reach significance [F(l,99)=0.13, p>.05]. Observation of Figure 12 does suggest

that there is a difference in average performance on Materials A and B compared

with the average performance on Materials C, D and E. This comparison reached

statistical significance [F(l,99)=5.31, p<.05]. Independent of the actual results of

this study in the main comparison of presentation formats, the finding that Materials

C, D and E were similar in difficulty in retrospect is particularly gratifying and adds

confidence to the results reported in Experiments 3 and 4.

Figure 12: Percentage correct for the five materials

70

60

% 50 correct

40

30

0 A B C D E

Maierial

Experiment 5 94

Table 11: Proportions correct means and standard deviations for

the five materials in Experiment 5

Material 1

Material2

Material 3

Material4

Materials

Average

Mean

%correct

41.4

37.0

57.6

57.4

57.6

50.2

Comparison of presentation fonnats

Standard

Deviation

15.4

19.3

22.2

20.1

20.8

The percentage correct recall scores for each of the five methods of presentation are

shown in Figure 13 (Table 12 shows the means and standard deviations of those

results). Observation of Figure 13 suggests that material is recalled better in

illustration than text, and that the combined form of repetition is superior to single

form repetition. The planned comparison between the texts (TT and T) and

illustrations (II and I) was significant favouring the illustrations [F(l,25)=11.59,

p<.05], and the planned comparison between the mixed repetition (TI) with the two

repeats in the same form (TI and II) was highly significant favouring the mixed

material [F(l,25)=13.81, p<.01]. There was no significant difference between the

single and repeated presentations in the same form [F(l,25)=0.33, p>.05].

Experiment 5 95

Figure 13: Percentage correct for subjects on the five presentation

conditions

70

60

% 50 correct

~o

30

0 Text Text Text


Text Illustration


five formats in Experiment 5

Text repeated

Text once

illustration repeated

illustration once

Text and illustration

Average

Mean

% correct

41.6

44.6

53.0

53.4

60.8

50.7

Standard

Deviation

21.5

20.7

22.5

16.3

20.5

Experiment 5 96


These results replicate the findings reported in Experiments 3 and 4 for student

performance on the different presentation formats of text and illustration. They also

replicate the findings of Experiments 1, 2 and 4 for student performance on the

combined form of presenting the same content compared to repetition in one form

only. It can now confidently concluded that for immediate comprehension and

recall when technical content of spatial information can be presented as either

illustration or text then the former is superior, and that a combined form of

duplication (text and illustration) is superior to duplication in the same form (either

text repeated or illustration repeated).

General discussion/or Experiments 1 to 5 97

General Discussion Experiments 1 to 5

There are three findings of particular interest reported in these studies. Firstly, in

studies one and two comprehension of text was not improved by the presence of a

technical illustration which was related to but not a repetition of the text.

Secondly, in studies two, four and five presentation of the same spatial content in

an illustration and in text resulted in superior comprehension than either repetition

in text or repetition in illustration. Thirdly, in the second, third, fourth and fifth

studies when it was possible to present essentially the same content in an

illustration or as text comprehension was superior in the case of the illustration.

The first study controlled for the repetition of the content of an illustration and text

by having the illustration's content related to, but additional to the text. Under

these conditions the presence or absence of the illustration had no effect on the

comprehension of text. This finding was supported with a similar result in

Experiment 2 in which the comprehension of text was not aided by the presence of

a related illustration. The failure to find an improvement in the comprehension of

text accompanied by an illustration is consistent with similar insignificant results

reported by Concannon, 1975, Koenke, 1968, Miller, 1938, Samuels, 1970,

Vernon, 1950, 1953, 1954, and Weintraub, 1960 but contrasts with a number of

robust effects recorded by Hayes and Readence, 1982, 1983, Lesgold et al., 1977,

Reid et al., 1983, and Reinking et al., 1988. However, it is not always clear from

the reports of studies in this area what the relationship was between the content of

the text and the content of the illustration. It is possible that there was very little

overlap of the content of the text and illustration in those studies which failed to

report significant improvement in the comprehension of text Schallert (1980) after

reviewing this literature came to the conclusion that there was a case for arguing

that certain illustrations improved the comprehension of related text, but she also

General discussion for Experiments 1 to 5 98

noted that overlapping content of text and illustration was probably an important

factor contributing to this improvement. The present findings are consistent with

this suggestion. When specific attempts were made to prevent the content of the

illustration repeating the content of the text, the comprehension of the text was not

improved by the presence of the illustration.

In her discussion of the potential importance of overlapping content of text and

illustration Schallert (1980) suggested that the improvement which was likely to

result should not simply be considered a consequence of repetition, but rather that it

probably resulted from the cognitive consequence of providing two different access

routes to comprehension of the content. The question of alternative access routes

versus simple repetition was examined in the second, fourth and fifth studies.

Presentation of the same conceptual and spatial content in an illustration and in text

resulted in superior comprehension than repetition in either text or repetition in

illustration. These findings support the importance of providing different access

routes to the comprehension of content, and the cognitive consequences of this can

be characterized in terms.of Paivio's ( 1971, 1986) dual coding theory. Dual coding

theory argues that there are two stores for material - verbal and nonverbal. Text is

primarily stored in the verbal store and illustrations in the nonverbal store and

interconnections between the two stores may occur. In the present context

comprehension might be expected to improve both because of the number of

memory codes available and the interconnections formed between verbal and

nonverbal stores. When the same content is presented in both text and illustration it

would be reasonable to expect a facilitation of interconnections between both stores.

Also, the nature of the illustrations used for this technical material with both

drawings and verbal labels might be expected to add even further to the cognitive

activity or processing involved, particularly in developing interconneptions between

verbal and nonverbal stores. When interactions between verbal and nonverbal

General discussion for Experiments 1 to 5 99

stores are characterised as cognitive activity or processing, the finding of superior

performance with the provision of a dual access route to comprehension is

consistent with the depth of processing theory of memory proposed by Craik and

Lockhart (1 '172). The facilitation of interconnections can be interpreted directly as a

greater breadth of cognitive processing in memory and Craik and Tulving (1975)

have argued that this leads to better recall of the content.

In the second, third, fourth and fifth studies where spatial information was used

which could be presented in either illustration or text, comprehension of content

presented as an illustration was superior to the comprehension of the same content

in text. This finding appears to be consistent with the results reported by Rigney

and Lutz (1976) who found that illustrations were superior to words in the

presentation of certain content. Rigney and Lutz argued that the superior

performance of illustrations was due to their facilitating effect on the development

of mental imagery. The importance of mental imagery for comprehension is well

documented. For example, Paivio (1986) found that mental images are especially

efficient for assimilating spatial information and Long, Winograd and Bridge

(1989) suggest that imagery improves comprehension because it is an

organizational tool for coding and storing meaning. However, it has been noted

that both text and illustrations can give rise to mental imagery (Schallert, 1980),

and in some cases the images are more vividly aroused by the text (Sadoski,

1983). The illustrations used in these studies depicted spatial information and

consistent with Paivio's (1986) argument they are likely to be superior facilitators

of images than the text. However, even if this were not the case, since illustrations

and images perform similar functions in improving the processing of information

(Schallert, 1980), the overall increase in cognitive processing prompted by the

illustrations might be expected to lead to better comprehension than is the case with

the text. In other words it might be expected that illustrations give greater depth


(Craik and Lockhart, 1972) and breadth (Craik and Tulving, 1975; Rasco,

Tennyson & Boutwell, 197 5) of processing of content. The superiority of

illustrations over the same content presented as text is also consistent with the

working memory model of Baddeley and his colleagues (e.g. Logie & Baddeley,

1987; Baddeley, 1988, 1989). It might also be important to note that in the present

studies the verbal labels and the pictorial material in the illustrations would be

stored in verbal and nonverbal interacting cognitive codes (Paivio, 1971, 1986)

and that Paivio and Casapo (1973) argue that pictures are more likely than text to

be dually coded. Under these circumstances it may well be the case that verbal

labels in illustrations may actually provide some form of dual access to the content

The results have some implications for the presentation of technical material such as

Geographical content. They suggest that firstly, technical illustrations present

information in their own right and are not simply adjuncts to content presented in

text Secondly, when spatial content lends itself to be presented as an illustration or

text the former is superior. Thirdly, in the case of important information presented

in text if it is possible to present this content in an illustration as well

comprehension is improved. Overall the results strongly suggest that in the

preparation texts and materials of technical content that at least as much care should

be taken in the drawing of illustrations as is taken with the writing of the text. At

this stage it is difficult to completely specify the requirements for the care needed in

presenting illustrations. Schallert (1980) noted a number of characteristics which

she considered would give positive effects for illustrations upon the comprehension

of text. They were that illustrations should represent spatial information or

information relevant to the total message of the text and she suggested further that if

the text provides a framework for certain information to be derived from the

illustrations then such illustrations may also have a beneficial effect. The beneficial

effects on comprehension due to the presentation of spatial information in


illustrations and in imagery have also been discussed (Kolers, 1973; Paivio, 1986),

and the importance of repetition of text content in illustrations has been

demonstrated here. However, it would be of interest to further delineate the sorts

of content which best lends itself to illustration and to ascertain how publishers and

authors decide on what is to be illustrated. Also, it might be useful to investigate

the opinions of the reading audience.


Introductron

The first five studies examined ways of presenting technical geographical material

which improved reader comprehension. A combination of text and illustration to

repeat important information resulted in better comprehension of that material by

students than when the content was repeated in the same form (either text repeated

or illustration repeated). This suggests that where important information is to be

repeated for emphasis that the best way to do this is in two forms. In the first five

studies it was also found that where technical information can be presented as

illustration or expository text, the former is superior. In some cases there are

aspects of geographical material which are virtually impossible to present in textual

form, and illustrations with explanatory text or short keys are far more appropriate

as text by itself would result in lengthy and complex exposition. For example,

attempting to describe contours on a topographic map is far better done by using a

map with a key than attempting to cover the content in text alone. This leads to the

question of when illustrations are used, what is the best way to present illustrations

with explanatory text? Is it best to put explanatory material on the illustration itself.

or is such written information best located in a key adjacent to the illustration?

Presentation techniques for illustrations have rarely been guided by cognitive theory

but more by common sense and tradition. The layout of materials is more usually

the result of some combination of visual elegance, tradition and random factors

(Sweller, Chandler, Tierney & Cooper, in press). Our knowledge of cognition has

now progressed and is supported by empirical findings so that traditional

techniques of presenting illustrations are becoming obsolete. Cognitive load theory

(Sweller 1988, 1989) suggests that the manner in which cognitive resources are

used in performing a task or set of tasks is critical to learning and problem solving.

Sweller, Chandler, Tierney and Cooper (in press) observed that a heavy,


extraneous cognitive load is imposed by many learning and problem solving

activities and that some presentation formats require considerable, initial mental

reorganisation and processing of elements prior to attending to learning new

information. Research undertaken in this area in mathematics, physics and

technology has shown that heavy cognitive load interferes with performance and

that to facilitate problem solving in these subjects the presentation and format of

instructional materials needs to take this into account (Sweller, 1988; Tarmizi &

Sweller, 1988; Ward & Sweller, 1990; Sweller et al., in press). In particular,

cognitive load is increased under conditions where mutually referring material is

split. A number of these studies have shown that when unnecessarily separated

sources of information are integrated problems are solved more readily than if the

material is split (e.g. Tarmizi & Sweller, 1988; Ward & Sweller, 1990).

In discussing empirical results on cognitive load in mathematics and science,

Sweller (1988) concludes that traditional procedures of instruction need to be

revised in order to reduce cognitive load and facilitate learning. From the studies he

reviewed Sweller suggested that appropriately reorganised materials which had a

unified source of information were superior to traditional split source presentations.

Whilst the research in cognitive load theory (Sweller 1988, 1989) has been in the

area of human problem solving, the format of materials of which the researchers are

critical is similar to materials used in other technical areas such as geography.

Obseivation of the way in which geographical materials are presented suggests that

the same sort of separation is occurring with many illustrations. Presentations of

this kind are likely to be making learning more difficult

The experimental studies in this section of this thesis are concerned with the

splitting of information in technical illustrations. That is, they address the question

of whether mutually referring, disparate sources of information that cannot be


understood in isolation should be integrated into a unitary entity to facilitate

learning. Before discussing the first of these studies the related empirical literature

will be reviewed and two theories of cognition which underpin this area of research

will be discussed.

Review of empirical literature

A number of studies have been reported which have examined the effects of

increased cognitive load upon learning (e.g. Baddeley, 1981; Baddeley & Hitch,

1974; Carroll & Carrithers, 1984; Cooper & Sweller, 1987; Sweller, Chandler,

Tierney & Cooper, in press; Tarmizi & Sweller, 1988; Ward and Sweller, 1990;

Zhu & Simon, 1987). In general these investigations have found that instructional

techniques that require students to split their attention between different sources of

information and then mentally integrate these result in fewer cognitive resources

being available to perform a reasoning or learning task. By way of example several

studies which have examined the effects of splitting attention between mutually

referring but disparate sources of information on cognitive load will be reviewed.

Cooper and Sweller (1987) examined the relationship between schema acquisition

and rule automation using algebra transfer problems. Schema acquisition and rule

automation are considered by Sweller (1989) to be the basic components of skilled

problem solving. In problem solving, a schema is considered to be a generalised

cognitive construct that enables problem solvers to recognize problems as

belonging to a particular category and requiring particular mental actions

appropriate to solving the problem (see Chi, Glaser & Rees, 1982; Schoenfeld &

Herrmann, 1982). Schemas generate moves and require little effort to determine


solutions as they facilitate performance on problems which are sttucturally similar

to problems seen previously (Sweller 1989; Ward & Sweller, 1990). As a result

schemas are favoured over alternative problem solving strategies even when it may

be inappropriate (Sweller, Mawer & Ward, 1983). Rule automation involves using

rules with little or no conscious processing and allows solutions to problems

including those which are different to previously encountered ones (see Kotovsky,

Hayes & Simon, 1985). For example, if the rule v = u + at is automated, a student

would not have to work out whether v referred to average or final velocity or what

the other symbols represented. Cooper and Sweller suggested that to achieve rule

automation much practice using the rule is needed and that schema acquisition

develops more rapidly and improves performance on problems similar to those

seen previously. A person not possessing relevant schemas or attempting to use a

non-automated rule is unlikely to have sufficient cognitive resources to, for

example, simultaneously search for the rule and solve the problem. Experts were

found to solve algebraic problems using schemas and automated rules whereas

novices used means-ends analysis which has been found to interfere with learning

(see Owen & Sweller, 1985; Sweller, Mawer & Howe, 1982; Sweller, Mawer &

Ward, 1983). Attention directed to differences in problem states results in a heavy

cognitive load as there is the need to consider the current problem state, past ones,

differences between these two states and the goal state (Ward & Sweller, 1990).

Cooper and Sweller concluded that using schemas and automated rules facilitates

the solution of problems and that reduced cognitive load assists in both the

acquisition of schemas and rule automation.

Zhu and Simon (1987) substituted the use of worked examples for lectures and

other conventional classroom activities in a longitudinal study in mathematics. The

use of worked examples has been found to reduce cognitive load and focus

attention on problem states and their associated moves (Cooper & Sweller, 1987;


Sweller & Cooper, 1985). Zhu and Simon used worked examples in algebra and

found strong advantages over direct instruction and that a conventional three year

mathematics course was completed in two years. There was a slightly higher level

of performance by those students who completed the course in two years using

worked examples compared to those who had done the same course over three years

using conventional techniques.

The use of mathematical problems has been examined in the context of human

attention by Tarmizi and Sweller (1988). Using circle geometry problems, these

researchers investigated the hypothesis that students studying worked examples

would have superior performance compared to more usual active problem solving

instructional techniques used in geometry. They conducted five experiments using

worked examples or subgoals as guidance which are commonly used in mathematics

to aid schema acquisition and improve problem solving abilities. Tarmizi and

Sweller found that students' performance did not improve when guidance was

provided by worked examples or subgoals. They observed that conventionally

formatted worked examples required students to split their attention between two

sources of information - a diagram and related equations and theorems that referred

to elements in the diagram. Presenting information in a unified source which did not

require mental integration of the diagram and text was found by these researchers to

result in worked examples being superior to conventional problems. Tarmizi and

Sweller suggested that holding material in working memory (Baddeley, 1981; 1989;

Baddeley & Hitch, 197 4) and processing it in order to effect integration was

detrimental to learning as cognitive activity not related to schema acquisition

exhausted mental resources. While the studies of Tarmizi and Sweller used problem

solving material which is different from the acquisition of information in

geographical illustrations, the conclusion of these authors that formats of presenting

information which did not split attention resulted in superior


performance as cognitive load was reduced is of interest in the present studies.

Using cognitive load theory (Swelter 1988, 1989) Ward and Swelter (1990)

conducted five experiments comparing worked geometric optics and kinematics in

physics under classroom conditions. According to cognitive load theory, the use of

worked examples to improve problem solving is not the most important factor but

rather whether the techniques used appropriately direct attention and impose a

relatively light cognitive load. Ward and Swelter found that the use of worked

examples in the classroom can facilitate learning as they can appropriately direct

attention and reduce cognitive load. They found further that the format of worked

examples is critical to their usefulness. For example, traditional practices of

presenting information in a kinematics worked example requires the problem

statement and sets of equations to be mentally integrated in order to make sense of

the example. A heavier cognitive load is imposed as equations need to be mapped

onto a statement. This is an irrelevant activity to schema acquisition and rule

automation and Ward and Sweller observed that this makes learning more difficult.

Worked examples which were formatted to reduce the need for mental integration

of several sources of information were superior to formats which caused attention

to be split between for example, the text and equations or text and diagrams.

In their fifth and final experiment, Ward and Sweller (1990) examined the counter

intuitive hypothesis that more explanatory material given in a worked example will

cause it be less effective. They found that this was the case and observed that

"excessive explanatory material associated with worked examples may be not

merely redundant, but detrimental as well. The temptation to provide unnecessary,

additional explanations needs to be resisted, especially if these explanations result

in split-source format. The best worked examples have all information integrated

into a single unit." (p. 38). Providing information in addition to the core material

Jntrodslction to Section 2 109

which also needed to be mentally integrated impeded learning. Ward and Sweller's

empirical data indicated that reduced cognitive load facilitates schema acquisition

and improves performance on similar problems which a particular schema can

incorporate. Rule automation was found to be facilitated and performance on

problems not covered by a previously acquired schema was improved.

Six experiments were conducted by Sweller, Chandler, Tierney and Cooper (in

press) using mathematics and engineering materials testing the suggestion that ·

instructional presentations can impose a heavy cognitive load prior to learning

commencing. Their experiments were generated by cognitive load theory (Sweller

1988, 1989) which is concerned with the manner in which cognitive resources are

distributed during learning and problem solving. Sweller et al. used a variety of

instructional materials such as text and text, illustration and illustration, geometric

and technological illustrations and text. Where presentation formats required

students to simultaneously attend to several related sources of information, as is

often the case with technical material, considerable mental reorganization and

processing of the elements was required. They found that combining related

information into a unitary source which does not split attention resulted in superior

performance compared with split attention formats. The results of their

experiments led them to suggest that instructional texts should (a) commence with

explanatory information integrated into as limited a number of units as is possible

which avoid separating out material for reasons of aesthetics, (b) have several

integrated worked examples to demonstrate the previously explained principles, and

(c) finish with several integrated worked examples mixed with conventional

problems for students to solve. Sweller et al. concluded that a heavy cognitive load

is imposed where the design of instructional material requires students to mentally

integrate disparate sources of mutually referring information and recommended a

radical recasting of instructional formats in most technical areas.


While problem solving is not the same as the acquisition of information from

geographical text it is sufficiently similar on occasion in terms of having attention

split between two or more sources of information. A straight forward expectation

of splitting attention in geography would be that cognitive load is increased and

performance impaired. The studies which follow are an extension of the work of

Tarmizi and Sweller (1988), Ward and Sweller (1990) and Sweller et al. (in press)

from the problem solving mode which is more peculiar to mathematics and similar

subjects to the cognitive integration schema development as is typical in geography.

Cognitive Theory

Cognitive science has made substantial progress in the last decade. Theories and

findings that are now available have clear implications for instructional design.

Schema theory and cognitive load theory will be outlined and used to generate

hypotheses. These hypotheses will be tested using secondary school, geography,

curriculum materials.

Schema theory

The first modem schema theorists such as Mandler and Johnson, 1977 and

Rumelhart, 1975 were concerned with mental representations of stories as had

Bartlett (1932) who first used the term "schema" in the context of cognitive theory.

Schema theory has an important role in cognitive science. A schema is a

generalised cognitive construct that allows us to classify categories of tasks

according to the mental actions appropriate to the task. For example, in a problem

solving context, schemas allow us to categorise problems according to the moves


necessary to solve them. The theory has been used to explain why expert problem

solvers have a superior memory of realistic problem states than novices. Based on

a study by De Groot ( 1966) who showed that master chess players and less

experienced players did not differ in the depth or breadth of search for each choice

point but differed with the accuracy with which they could reproduce chess board

configurations they saw briefly from real games (experts being able to reproduce

more accurately what they saw than novices), various studies found that expert

problem solvers had a superior memory of relevant problem states than novices.

Chase and Simon (1973) using chess, Egan and Schwartz (1979) using electronic

diagrams, Jeffries, Turner, Polson and Atwood (1981) using computer software

and Sweller and Cooper (1985) using algebra, amongst others, all found that

experts had better memories for realistic problem states than novices. Schemas

acquired by experts allow them to chunk elements of a problem state into a reduced

number of entities that facilitate reproduction. Possessing relevant schemas enables

people to slot the contents of an illustration into schema and reproduce the

illustration if necessary. Such schemas cannot operate on random problem states.

Other findings also can be explained by schema theory. For example, Chi, Glaser

and Rees (1982) found that experts tended to classify problems according to

problem moves while novices used surface structures. Experts could use their

schemas (which incorporate moves) as a classifying medium. Novices had to find

alternative structures. Larkin, McDermott, Simon and Simon (1980) found that

experts use schemas to generate problem solving moves forward from the givens

while novices work backward from the goal.

CQ&Jlitive load theozy

From schema theory we can assume that skilled intellectual performance is


dependent on the acquisition of a very large number of schemas. How should

instruction be designed to ensure that it maximally facilitates schema acquisition?

Cognitive load theory (Sweller 1988, 1989) has been used to suggest that many

traditional instructional techniques require students to engage in cognitive activities

that both impose a heavy cognitive load and are irrelevant to acquiring schemas.

For example, Tarmizi and Sweller (1988) using Euclidian geometry and Ward and

Sweller (1990) using physics found that traditionally formatted worked examples

were relatively ineffective. Similarly, Sweller, Chandler, Tierney and Cooper (in

press) found that conventionally structured instruction in coordinate geometry and

numerical control programming (a form of programming designed to control

industrial machinery) also was ineffective in assisting students to acquire schemas.

In most of these cases instruction consisted of a diagram and its related text,

equations or theorems. Neither the diagram nor the associated material was

intelligible in isolation. In order to understand the information, students first had to

mentally integrate the diagram and its related material. Once integration had

occurred, schema acquisition could commence. Mentally integrating disparate but

mutually referring sources of information is an essential precursor to schema

acquisition but irrelevant to learning itself. It requires cognitive resources and

distracts attention from essential aspects of the task. The obvious alternative is to

circumvent the need for students to mentally integrate material by physically

integrating it. For example, equations can be placed directly on relevant sections of

a diagram rather than adjacent to it. In the experiments conducted by Tannizi and

Sweller (1988), Ward and Sweller (1990) and Sweller et al. (in press), such a

format resulted in substantial benefits to learning.

Instruction in geography frequently consists of diagrams and text or tables that

require students to split their attention between and mentally integrate these

,, Introduction to Section 2 113

disparate sources of information before the material can be understood. Based on

the results obtained in mathematics, physics and technology one might expect that

the cUITent way of presenting some geographical material is not the optimum as it

splits attention between multiple sources of information. In mathematics and

physics this splitting of attention increased cognitive load and inhibited the

development of schemas. One might expect a similar inhibiting effect of the

transformation and integration of material in geography which is split.

Conventional methods of presenting information in illustration often result in

readers splitting attention between multiple sources of information which must be

then mentally integrated. For example, most topographic maps use symbols on the

map and have a key explaining what the symbols stand for elsewhere with the

result that readers are required to split their attention between sources of

information. Reading a topographic map requires mental integration of the

descriptors in the key with the map. To accomplish this integration under these

circumstances either the illustration or text must be retained in working memory

(Baddeley, 1981, 1989) in part or in whole, because they are not observed

simultaneously. It can hypothesized that a split attention effect is likely under such

circumstances and that it could be eliminated by integration of text and diagrams. It

can also be hypothesized that such physical integration of sources of information

will improve schema acquisition and facilitate learning. These hypotheses are

examined in the experiments which follow.

Experiment 6 114

Experiment 6

Geographic instructional materials frequently include a diagram consisting of

symbols and an adjacent key in which the name of each feature is associated with

its appropriate symbol. Meaning can be derived neither from the diagram nor the

key until after they have been mentally integrated. From the theories discussed, it

can be hypothesized that instruction will be more effective if the key is eliminated

and the feature names or descriptions are placed directly on the diagram. Physical

integration, by eliminating the need for mental integration, should in tum eliminate

the split attention effect. This hypothesis is tested in the present experiment.

Method

Subjects

Forty-four boys from Years 9, 10 and 11 who study geography at a high school in

Sydney took part in this study. The range in reading ability amongst these students

is in the good performance level. The students ranged in age from 14.1 years to


classes they were in were not streamed with more able or less able students in them

based upon their past performances in geography).

Desip

Two lots of material of similar difficulty were constructed for use in this

experiment. The combinations of these two materials with the two attention

conditions were fully counterbalanced across subjects. That is, twenty-two

subjects received Materials 1 under the split attention condition and Materials 2

under the combined attention condition and the other twenty-two subjects received

Materials 2 under the split attention condition and Materials 1 under the combined

Experiment 6 115

attention condition. Within these two groupings, eleven subjects read split

attention material followed by combined attention material and vice versa for the

other eleven. The result of this counterbalancing was that eleven students received

Material 1 split followed by Material 2 combined, another eleven received Material

2 combined followed by Material 1 split, another eleven Material 1 combined

followed by Material 2 split and the final eleven Material 2 split followed by

Material 1 combined.

The design was a repeated measures design which allowed the comparison of split

and combined conditions within subjects. The dependent measure was

performance on forty multiple-choice items in which twenty items each referred to

the content presented by each of the two materials. There were two learning and

test sessions one week apart and then a delayed test session one week after the

second learning and test session. That is, the subjects read the material and did the

associated multiple choice items, repeated this procedure one week later and then

did the multiple-choice items without reading the material a week after that.

Materials

The two cross sections used in the combined conditions in this study were used in

Experiments 3 and 4 and these were redrawn for the two split conditions. The split

condition had the diagram and associated descriptors separated while the combined

version of each of the illustrations had all the descriptors within the illustrations.

The cross sections in combined and split forms can be found in Appendix 11. The

multiple choice items for the two cross sections were the same as those used for

those materials in Experiments 3 and 4 and can be found in Appendix 5. Each of

the four reading materials (Material 1 combined and split, and Material 2 combined

and split) and associated tests consisted of eight quarto pages stapled together (i.e.

there were four lots of eight pages stapled together). The content presented to

Experiment 6 116

students was preceded by the instructions followed by a blank page. The

instructions for the test items followed and there was a blank page prior to the test

items. The blank pages ensured that students could not preview material. The split

condition had the diagram and associated descriptors separated while the combined

version of each of the illustrations had all the descriptors within the illustrations.

Text in the illustrations was prepared using Apple Macintosh "Times" 10 point

typestyle and text in the tests was Apple Macintosh "Times" 12 point typestyle.

Procedure

There was one geography class in Years 9 and 10 and one from the three classes in

Year 11 selected. There were three phases of this experiment each of which was

conducted in one teaching period of 50 minutes. On entering the classroom the

students were instructed to be seated with no materials on the desk except a pen or

pencil with which to write. Once all students were seated they were told: "We will

be doing two geography reading comprehension exercises today. You will all have

two lots of material to read and a test to do on each of the reading materials

immediately after you have read the material. During this period there will be no

interaction with other students. All instructions are to be followed. You may not

refer back to the reading materials once we start a test. The two reading materials

will be collected by you from me in the order that you are to read them in and you

are to place them flat on the desk in front of you - you are not to open them until

instructed to do so and do ensure that you keep them in the order in which you

receive them. You will be given three minutes reading time and at the end of this

time you will then do the test. Once everyone has completed that test and you are

instructed to do so, we will then start reading the second lot of materials and do the

test for that when instructed to do so." Reading materials for each student were

then distributed.

Experiment 6 117

Once each student in the class had their two lots of reading materials and associated


experimenter:


this paper. Carefully read the material. You will be given three minutes

reading time.




time.



The students were then told "commence reading". At the end of the three minutes

reading time (previous experience had indicated that this was sufficient), the

students were told to cease reading and to turn to page 4 and the instructions on that

page were read aloud:

"1. When instructed to do so tum this page and the blank page to page 6 to





to the most correct alternative for the multiple choice test

3. You may nm refer back to the reading material when you are doing the test


The experimenter then infonned students that:


may start the test now."

Experiment 6 118

Once all students had completed their first test they were instructed to: "Put your

pens down and put the first reading material and test face down on the desk. We

will now read the second lot of material. Read the instructions on page one - these

are exactly the same as for the first lot of reading materials (the students were given

about twenty seconds to do this). You may turn to page three and commence

reading the material now." At the end of the three minutes reading time the students

were told to: "Cease reading and turn to page 4 and read the instructions on page 4

relating to the multiple choice test. These are the same as for the first test (the

students were given about twenty seconds to do this). You may turn to page six

and commence the test now." The same procedure was followed for the other

learning and delayed test sessions.


The main result of interest is the comparison between the split and combined

conditions. The average percentage correct recall scores for the three tests for the

split material was 58.8% and for the combined material this percentage was 64.2%

(data for the three tests are indicated in Table 13). Overall, the comparison between

combined and split attention approached but failed to reach statistical significance

[F(l,43)= 3.49, .05<p<.1]. However, one of the interactions between attention

and trials did reach significance [F(l,43)=58.29, p<.01]. This suggests that the

difference in performance by students between the combined and split conditions

was statistically significant for one or more of the trials. Observation of the data

shows bigger differences in student performance between the split and combined

conditions on the first trial and recall trial than the second learning trial. Tests of

simple effects (Winer, 1971) showed that the difference in the recall trial reached

statistical significance and the first learning trial approached significance

E,cperiment6 119

[F(l,128)=6.42, p<.05 and F(l,128)=3.36, .05<p<.l respectively]. The

difference between the split and combined conditions did not reach significance in

the second learning trial [F(l,128)=0.93, p>.05].


three tests in Experiment 6

First test with

reading material

(Fll'St week)

Mean Standard

% correct Deviation

Combined 66.6

Split 61.1

% diffenn:e 5.1

16.1

15.2

Second test with

reading material

(Second week)

Third test without

reading material

(Third week)

Average

Mean Standard Mean Standard of Mean

% correct Deviation % correct Deviation % correct

71.9

69.0

2.9

20.1

20.5

54.0

46.4

7.6

22.0

19.6

64.2

58.8

5.4


The results give limited support for the split attention hypothesis. Presenting

information in illustration which did not split attention between the illustration and a

key led to observably superior performance on all three trials and this difference

reached statistical significance on the third trial. These results suggest that splitting

attention between an illustration and its key does inhibit integration of the two

Experiment 6 120

sources of information. Failure to reach statistical significance on all three trials is

probably due to asymptotic effects. Looking at the data it appears that the test on

the reading material may have been too easy and one possibility is that ceiling

effects may have occurred whereby a number of students scored full marks on tests

or close to full marks ( 41 % of students scored 80% or more of the test items correct

in the second trial). This possible ceiling effect may have restricted the opportunity

for the combined condition to reliably demonstrate superior performance over the

split condition across the three trials.

Other results showed that there was no interaction between attention and the

comparison on the first and second learning trials [F(l,43)=0.21, p>.05]; student

performance improved significantly from Trial 1 to Trial 2 [F(l,43)=49.40, p<.01];

and performance in the learning sessions was superior to the delayed session with

no further learning [F(l,43)=10.16, p<.01]. The changes in performance over

trials is expected. That is, one might expect improvement in performance from

Trial 1 to Trial 2 and performance to drop off for the delayed trial without learning.

The intention of giving two learning and one post session in this study was to see

whether the advantage of the combined condition improved with the second

learning trial and post learning trial after feedback had stopped. From the data there

was no evidence of this happening. However, it was not possible to determine this

from the data obtained due to possible ceiling effects. There was very little room

for improvement in performance from Trial 1 to Trial 2 as performance levels were

on average quite high. If the difficulty of material is increased so that the group

achieves a mean of around 50% on the first trial it is possible that this will provide

an opportunity to see whether or not a the advantage of the combined format

improves over time. This question is examined further in Experiments 7 and 8.

Experiment 7 121

Experiment 7

The significant result in Experiment 6 indicated an advantage for the combined form

of presenting a technical illustration over a situation in which the labelling for the

illustration is separated from the actual diagram. However, there appeared to be

possible ceiling effects for the delayed learning and test session which reduced the

difference between the two conditions of combined and split material. In light of

the introductory comments to this section and the discussion in Experiment 6, it is

desirable to examine the split attention hypothesis using materials which are more

difficult to comprehend and thus reduce possible ceiling effects over several

learning and tests sessions. This study has three learning and test sessions one

week apart followed by three test sessions one week apart (i.e there are six trials -

the first three of which subjects read the materials and then did the test and three in

which they only did the test and did not read the materials). From the introductory

comments and the results of the previous study it is expected that the combined

conditions should be superior to the split conditions. Also it could be expected that

as the learning trials go on that the difference in performance by subjects in the

combined and split conditions should become greater and that this will carry on into

the tests where subjects do not read the materials. That is, the superior

performances on the combined materials should become more pronounced over

time.

Method

Subjects

Twenty-nine boys from Year 9 who study geography at a high school in Sydney

took part in this study. The range in reading ability amongst these students is in the

good performance level. The students ranged in age from 14.1 years to 15.3 years

Experiment 7 122

(mean age 14.7 years) and were of mixed ability in geography.

Desi&n

As for Experiment 6 there were two lots of material both with split and combined

formats which were fully counterbalanced across subjects. There were three

learning and test sessions one week apart and then three delayed test sessions one

week apart starting one week after the third learning and test session (i.e there were

six trials in all). That is, the subjects read the material and did the associated

multiple choice and true/false items, repeated this procedure one week later and

then a week after that, and then did the multiple-choice and true/false items without

reading the material a week after that and repeated this on two further trials also

held one week apart. Each subject viewed a split attention condition in which the

labels for the illustration were presented in a legend below the illustration and a

compound attention condition in which the labels were given in the illustration.

Two lots of material of similar difficulty were used and the combinations of these

two materials with the two attention conditions were fully counterbalanced across

subjects. That is, fifteen subjects received Materials 1 under the split attention

condition and Materials 2 under the combined attention condition and the other

fourteen subjects received Materials 2 under the split attention condition and

Materials 1 under the combined attention condition. Within these two groupings

seven subjects viewed combined Material 1 then split Material 2, seven others

viewed split Material 2 then combined Material 1, another eight viewed split

Material 1 then combined Material 2 and eight subjects viewed combined Material 2

then split Material 1.

The design was a repeated measures design which allowed the comparison of split

and combined conditions within subjects. The dependent measure was

performance on forty multiple-choice items and twenty true/false items in which

Experiment 7 123

twenty multiple choice items and ten true/false items each referred to the content

presented by each of the two materials.

Mat;erials

One technical illustration used was modified from a geography textbook ,by

Underwood (1988, p. 60) and the other constructed by the author. The split

condition illustrations were designed so that the diagram itself had little meaning

without referring to the associated descriptors below it whilst the combined version

of each of the illustrations had all the descriptors within the illustration. The

illustrations and multiple choice and true/false items based on these reading

materials can be found in Appendix 13. Three experts in geography judged the

multiple choice and true/false items to be valid for the material to which they

referred. Each of the four reading materials and associated tests consisted of eight

quarto pages stapled together (i.e. there were four lots of eight pages stapled

together). The content presented to students was preceded by the instructions

followed by a blank page. The instructions for the test items followed and there

was a blank page prior to the test items. The blank pages ensured that students

could not preview material. Text in the illustrations was prepared using Apple

Macintosh "Times" 10 point typestyle and text in the tests was Apple Macintosh


Proce<inre.

There was one geography class in Year 9 at the school. The Experiment was

conducted over six weeks with each trial one week apart. Approximately half of

one teaching period of 50 minutes was used for each trial.· On entering the

geography room and being seated the students were told for the first learning and

test session by the experimenter: "We will be doing two geography reading

comprehension exercises today and there will be a test to do at the end of the

Experiment 7 124

reading time for each of the two materials based upon that material. During this

period don't talk or look at other people's materials. Follow all instructions. You

will now receive two answer sheets which require you to print your name on them.

There is also a space to fill in the number of the material you are answering on that

sheet. You will learn that number when you receive the reading materials. You are

to record your answers to the twenty multiple choice items and ten true/false items

for each reading material on these sheets." The answer sheets were then

distributed. Students were then told: "As your name is called come and collect the

two reading materials and return to your desk. Leave the materials flat on the desk

in the order that you receive them. You may read the instructions on the first page

whilst the materials are being distributed. Those instructions will then be read

aloud and everyone will have three minutes to study the material on page three.

After that we will all tum to page four for the instructions for the test to be read and

then turn to page 6 to start the test when told to do so. We will follow the same

procedure for the second reading material and test II Appropriate reading materials

for each student were distributed.

Once the appropriate materials were distributed to each student in the class the

instructions on the front were read aloud by the experimenter:

"1. When instructed to do so, tum the first page and the blank page to page 3 of


reading time.




time.

4. At the end of the reading time you will be doing a multiple choice test and a

true/false test based upon the material you have read. 11

Experiment 7 125





" 1. When instructed to do so turn this page and the blank page to page 6 to


and the 10 true/false items These items are based upon the material which you

have just read. You will be given sufficient time to complete all questions

(approximately 10 minutes).


to the most correct alternative for the multiple choice test and write true or false

in the space provided on the Answer sheet for the true/false items.

3. You may nm refer back to the reading material when you are doing the test.


The experimenter then informed students that :


may start the test now." Once all students had completed all twenty multiple choice

items and the ten true/false items the experimenter instructed them, "Put your pens

down and close up the test. All tests and Answer Sheets will now be collected".

For the second and third learning and test sessions the students were told "We will

be redoing the reading test from the other day reading the same materials and doing

the same tests to see how much more you may now remember." A similar

procedure was followed to distribute the answer sheets and reading and test

materials as was used in the first trial. For the fourth, fifth and sixth trials where

the subjects did not read the materials but did the tests they were told: "You will be

Experiment 7 126

doing the same tests as the other day, only this time you will not be reading the

materials first. Do your best from memory." Answer sheets and tests for the two

materials were then distributed in each of these memory trials and the instructions

for the tests read aloud in a similar manner to the test done in the first three learning

and test sessions.


Performance on the thirty items based on the information in the reading materials

can be seen in Figure 14. Table 14 shows the means and standard deviations of

those results (the proportions correct data for students can be found in Appendix

14). The data show clearly an advantage of combined over split presentation

formats with the difference being highly significant [F(l,28)= 21.68, p<.01].

Observation of the means in Table 14 suggests that there was an increase in

advantage for the combined condition as learning continued with decreased

advantage over the delayed or memory trials. A reliable test of this kind would be

detected by a significant quadratic or linear trend. The linear trend analysis

approached but did not reach significance [F(l,28)= 2.24, p>.05]. The quadratic

trend in the data was highly significant [F(l,28)= 11.80, p<.01]. Observation of

the data also suggests that for the combined format improvement in performance

was more dramatic and the decline in performance, once the learning trials cease,

was more rapid. With the split condition the learning sessions do not show as great

an improvement and once the learning trials cease, the drop off in performance is

slower. Therefore one might expect an interaction with the quadratic trend with

attention and this approached but did not reach statistical significance [F(l,28)=

2.99, .1> p >.05].

Experiment7 127

Figure 14: Percentage correct for each of the six trials for subjects

on questions referring to combined and split conditions

70

60 ~ C...,1,ille4 ------0

0 ~ 50 0

0

96 .-------- -.- ...A comet ~lit -·-•

40

30

o Trial 1 Trial2 Trial3 Trial4 Trials Trial6

Table 14: Proportions correct means and standard deviations for six

trials in Experiment 7

Learning trials Memory trials

1 2 3 4 5 6

Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.

Combined 50.2 15.4 52.5 173 59.5 14.2 56.1 15.9 51.7 15.8 53.3 16.0

Split 42.8 10.6 443 103 48.4 13.3 47.0 12.5 44.9 11.2 47.4 13.7

- - - - - -%difference 7.4 8.2 10.9 9.1 6.8 5.9

Experiment 7 128

The comparison of the combined and the split formats supports the suggested

advantage for the former obtained in the previous experiment. The data suggest

that there is a slight improvement over learning trials but that any improvement is

wiped out faster over memory trials. The advantage for the combined condition did

not reliably increase over the three learning trials although there was a trend in this

direction. The compounding of the advantage of combined conditions over

learning trials remains unresolved and this suggests that further examination is

needed.

Before leaving this study an examination of the multiple choice items given to

students suggested that the items could be classified as either factual or inferential.

This classification indicated that it might be possible to examine the effects of split

attention on different types of items.

Split attention and tme of item

The multiple choice items were divided by four experts into those which could be

answered directly from the content (factual items) and those items which required

students to make some inference from the content to be able to correctly answer the

question (inferential items). For example, a factual item would require students to

recall the height of the mountain shown in Material 1 in Appendix 13, whereas an

inferential item would require students to classify human activities shown in the

diagram and to then determine which ones were or were not present from the

categories provided (such as primary industry, secondary industry, tertiary

industry, transport activities, urban activities and recreational activities). Overall,

28 items were classified as factual and 12 as inferential. The proportions correct

score for each student was calculated and then an analysis carried out on these

proportions. Performance under the split and combined conditions for each type of

item over trials can be observed in Figure 15 and excluding the trials factor in

Experiment 7 129

Figure 16.

Figure 15: Performances of students on factual versus inferential

questions over trials

60

50

40

X COD'e.ct 30

20

10

0 Trial 1 Trial 2

L e.anung trials Trial 3 Trial 4 Trial 5

Memory trials Trial 6

Experiment 7 130


questions

60

50

40

% correct 30

20

10

0 Combined

factual Split factual Combined

inferential Split inferential

Observation of Figures 15 and 16 shows the already reported advantage of the

combined presentation format over split format. There is a significant difference in

performance between factual and inferential items with higher levels of performance

on the factual items [F(l,28)=77.80, p<.05]. There is a suggestion in Figure 16

that the advantage for the combined format is greater on factual items than it is on

inferential items. However, analysis of the data failed to provide statistical support

in so far as the interaction of attention (combined and split) with types of items

(factual and inferential) failed to reach significance [F(l,28)=1.55, p>.05]. Neither

was there a threeway interaction involving attention by types of items by quadratic

trend [F(l ,28)=0.45, p>.05]. These results suggest that the advantage of the

combined presentation format over the split format may be independent of the

cognitive level of questions set. Based on the examination in this study there is no

Experiment 7 131

reason to suggest that splitting attention is more or less harmful when the material

to be learned is factual or needs more elaborate cognitive processing as the

inferential items required.

Experiment 8 132 •

Experiment 8

At this point in the studies there has been an observed advantage for the combined

presentation format over the split format in Experiment 6 and a reliable difference

favouring the combined format in the Experiment 7. The effect of splitting attention

was robust across factual and inferential questions in Experiment 7. There has also

been an indication in Experiment 7 that the advantage of the combined presentation

format may increase with further learning. This experiment was designed to

examine the effects of repeated learning trials on the advantage of combined over

split presentation formats for illustrations. There are in total six learning trials in

each of the combined and split conditions. Given the trend in Experiment 7 it is

anticipated that the combined format should show a significantly increasing

advantage with further learning.

Method

Suqjects

Fifty-two boys from Year 8 who study geography at a high school in Sydney took

part in this study. The range in reading ability amongst these students is in the

good performance level. The students ranged in age from 12.3 years to 15.1 years

(mean age 13.6 years) and were of mixed ability in geography.

Pesim

The combined and split attention conditions were varied between subjects with 26

students receiving a combined condition and the other 26 students a split condition.

Three lots of material of similar difficulty were used. The six trials were paired so

that one lot of material was learnt and responded to in the first two trials, a second

lot of material learnt and responded to in the third and fourth trials and a third lot of

Experiment 8 133

material learnt and responded to in the fifth and sixth trials. The three lots of

materials were fully counterbalanced across the three pairs of trials. The order in

which students received these materials is shown in Table 15.

A two way factorial design was used with attention conditions varied between

subjects and learning trials varied within subjects. The dependent measure was

performance on sixty multiple-choice items and thirty true/false items in which

twenty multiple choice items and ten true/false items each referred to the content

presented by each of the three materials each subject was given over the trials.

Experiment8 134

Table 15: Order of condition by material given to subjects

Numberof

students

5

5

4

4

4

4

5

5

4

4

4

4

Materials

Weeks 1 and2

Combined 1

Combined 1

Combined2

Combined2

Combined3

Combined3

Split 1

Split 1

Split 2

Split 2

Split 3

Split 3

Weeks3 and4 Weeks5 and6

Combined2 Combined3

Combined3 Combined2

Combined3 Combined 1

Combined 1 Combined3

Combined2 Combined 1

Combined 1 Combined2

Split2 Split 3

Split 3 Split 2

Split 3 Split 1

Split 1 Split 3

Split 1 Split 2

Split2 Split 1

The two lots of reading materials and associated multiple choice and true/false items

used in Experiment 7 were used in this study and a third lot of material and

associated multiple choice and true/false items of similar difficulty constructed. The

reading materials and associated multiple choice items and true false items used in

this Experiment can be viewed in Appendix 13. As with previous experiments, the

content presented to students was preceded by the instructions followed by a blank

page. The instructions for the test items followed and there was a blank page prior

Experiment 8 135

to the test items. The blank pages ensured that students could not preview material.

Procedure.

There were two geography classes in Year 8 at the school. The Experiment was

conducted over six weeks with each trial one week apart. Approximately half of

one teaching period of 50 minutes was used for each trial. Upon entering the

geography room and being seated the students were told for the first learning and

test session: 'We will be doing a geography reading comprehension exercise today

and there will be some multiple choice and true/false items to do at the end of the

reading time based upon the material. There is to be no interaction with other

students and you are to follow all instructions. You will now receive an answer

sheet to record all of your answers to the items on. Please print your name clearly

in the space provided on the answer sheet. There is also a space to fill in the

number of the material you are answering on that sheet. You will learn that number

when you receive the reading materials. 11 The answer sheets were then distributed.

Students were then told: "As your name is called come and collect the reading

material and return to your desk. Leave the material flat on the desk. You may

read the instructions on the first page whilst the materials are being distributed.

Those instructions will then be read aloud and everyone will have two minutes to

study the material on page three. After that we will all turn to page four for the

instructions for the test to be read and then turn to page six to start the test when

told to do so." Appropriate reading material for each student were distributed.

Once the appropriate tests were distributed to each student in the class the


11 1. When instructed to do so, turn the first page and the blank page to page 3 of


reading time.

Experiment 8 136




time.


true/false test based upon the material you have read."





"1. When instructed to do so tum this page and the blank page to page 6 to








3. You may DQ1 refer back to the reading material when you are doing the test


The experimenter then infotmed students that :


may start the test now." Once all students had completed all twenty items in their

multiple choice test and ten true/false items the experimenter instructed them, "put

your pens down and close up the test. All tests and Answer Sheets will now be

collected".

Experiment 8 137

A similar procedure was followed in the subsequent trials to distribute the materials

and do the multiple choice and true/false items as was used in the first trial.


There was again a substantial and reliable advantage for the illustrations drawn in

the combined format over those presented in a split format [F(l,50)= 8.01, p<.01].

The advantage for the combined over split conditions is shown in Figure 17. The

means and standard deviations for the two conditions by six trials is shown in

Table 16 and the proportions correct data for students can be found in Appendix

15. The data in this table do not demonstrate either an overall consistent

improvement in trials (this is not completely surprising as three different materials

were used with each subject), and there is no indication of the advantage for the

combined condition increasing over trials. A test of linear trend over trials failed to

reach significance [F(l,50)= 0.48, p>.05] and there was no interaction of this

trend with the format [F(l,50)= 0.00, p>.05]. The results failed to offer any

support for the trend observed in the Experiment 7 of an advantage for the

combined condition increasing with further learning.

Experiment 8 138

Figure 17: Percentage correct for each of the six trials for subjects

on questions referring to combined and split conditions

70

60 .~ 96 50 o_____..-0

comet

40

30

0 Trtal 1 TrtaJ.2 Trlal3 Trlal4 TrtaJ.5 Trlal6


six trials in Experiment 8

Trial

1 2 3 4 5 6

Mean S.D. Meat S.D. Mean S.D. Meat S.D. Meat S.D. Mean S.D.

Combined 56.0 15.2 61.8 15.0 59.9 12.9 67.2 13.7 56.0 13.3 60.5 15.1

Split 49.9 13.7 53.S 13.1 50.6 15.9 57.8 15.2 48.1 13.7 53.9 16.3

% Difference 6.1 8.3 .9.3 9.4 7.9 6.6

Experiment 8 139

Split attention and type of item

As previously detailed Materials 1 and 2 were the same as those used in Experiment

7 and 28 multiple choice items were classified as factual and 12 as inferential.

Material 3 had insufficient inferential items to permit this division and so the

proportions correct score for each student was calculated for Materials 1 and 2 and

then an analysis carried out on these proportions. Performance under the split and

combined conditions for each type of item can be seen in Figure 18.


questions

50

40

% correct 30

20

10

0

Combined factual

Split factual Combined inferential

Split inferential

Observation of Figure 18 replicates the already reported advantage for the combined

presentation format over the split format and suggests that performance on the

factual items is superior to performance on the inferential items. The comparison

Experiment 8 140

between factual and inferential items was highly significant favouring the factual

items [F(l,50)=9.03, p<.01]. In this study the observed advantage for the

combined format being greater on factual items than it is on inferential items is

supported by the analysis with a significant interaction between attention and type

of item [F(l,50)=4.43, p<.05]. This result suggests that the effect of split attention

increasing cognitive load was more pronounced on factual items than inferential

items. Given that there was an trend in the same direction in Experiment 7 and a

robust difference was detected here, this effect will be examined further in the next

study.

Experiment 9 141

Experiment 9

In Experiments 6, 7 and 8 as with Experiments 3, 4 and 5, a procedure was used

which presents each student with all conditions. This took advantage of the fact

that each individual's level of performance is fairly consistent. That is, a student

who is better or worse than other students under one learning condition is likely to

be better or worse under other similar learning conditions (Bassett, Watts &

Nurcombe, 1978; Tyler, 1965). For this reason, each student in these studies read

material, with appropriate controls, under each of the experimental conditions.

Different materials were fully counterbalanced so that conclusions could be drawn

for different treatments. Materials and conditions were intentionally confounded in

the designs as it was possible that, for example, the effects of one material under

one condition may have differed from the effects of another material under that

condition. With the repeated measures designs used it was not possible to discern

this. There are no a priori reasons to expect that any one combination of material

and conditions will give rise to unique performance. However, for completeness

any presence of a unique combination effect was examined in this Experiment by

varying the materials by conditions between subjects. Indeed Poulton (1975)

cautions against interpreting repeated measures designs without data from between

subjects designs. In response to this cautionary note and by way of completeness

the four combinations of two materials by combined and split attention conditions

were all varied between subjects. If the results of this Experiment replicate the

advantage for combined over the split presentations obtained in Experiments 6, 7

and 8 then one can conclude with some confidence that the combined condition is

superior to the split

Experiment 9

Method

Subjects

142

One hundred boys from Years 10, 11 and 12 who study geography at a high school

in Sydney took part in this study. The range in reading ability amongst these

students is in the good performance level. The students ranged in age from 15.1

years to 19.5 years (mean age 16.9 years) and were of mixed ability in geography

(i.e. the classes they were in were not streamed with more able or less able students

in them based upon their past performances in geography). Four groups of twenty

five students each were selected on the basis of their geography test results from the

mid year assessment and assigned so that each group was of equal ability. The

resulting mean scores for each group were 63.4, 66.8, 67 .1 and 64.2 and not

surprisingly an analysis of variance indicated these small differences were not

significant [F(3,96)=0.40, p>.05]. There were ten Year 12 students, eight Year 11

and seven Year 10 students in Groups 1, 2 and 3 and in Group 4 there were eleven

Year 12 students, eight Year 11 and six Year 10 students.

Desip

One of each of the four groups of subjects viewed one of the four combinations of

materials by conditions. The design was a two way classification which allowed

the comparison of split and combined conditions between groups and the

comparison between materials. The materials were the same as those used in

Experiment 7 - the main difference in experimental design being that conditions are

now varied between four groups, not within subjects as was done in Experiments

3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Again two viewing conditions used the combined and split

presentations with two sets of materials. This allowed the examination of the

effects of presenting the same information in a technical illustration two different

ways - combined and split. As two different materials were used for each

condition (combined and split) any differences in the difficulty of the reading

Experiment 9 143

materials could also be examined. Post learning performance was measured on

two sets of multiple choice and true/false items based on the two materials.

Materials

Comprehension of information was examined under four presentation conditions:

Group 1 had an illustration with the labelling within the diagram.

Group 2 had the same illustration as Group 1 but the labelling was in a key

beneath the diagram.

Group 3 had a similar illustration to Group 1 and the labelling was also within the

diagram.

Group 4 had the same illustration as Group 3 but the labelling was in a key

beneath the diagram.

The two illustrations and associated multiple choice and true/false items used in the

conditions were used in Experiment 7 and can be found in Appendix 13. The

reading materials and associated tests consisted of eight quarto pages stapled

together. The content presented to students was preceded by the instructions

followed by a blank page. The instructions for the test items followed and there

was a blank page prior to the test items. The blank pages ensured that students

could not preview material. Text in the illustrations was prepared using Apple

Macintosh "Times" 10 point typestyle and text in the tests was Apple Macintosh


Procedure

The Experiment was conducted with each of the classes in Years 10, 11 and 12.

Approximately half of one teaching period of 50 minutes was used. On entering

the geography room and being seated the students were told: "We will be doing a

geography reading comprehension exercise today and there will be multiple choice

Experiment 9 144

and true/false items to do at the end of the reading time based upon the material you

are about to read. During this period don't talk or look at other people's materials.

Follow all instructions. The reading material will be placed flat on the desk in front

of you. Leave it in that position until you are told to open it up. You may read the

instructions on the first page whilst the materials are being distributed."

Appropriate reading materials for each student were then distributed along with an

answer sheet for students to record their answers to the twenty multiple choice

items and ten true/false items.

Once the appropriate reading material was distributed to each student in the class the




reading time.


3. You are only to read this material and you are not permitted to have any

writing or other implement (ruler, calculator, etc.) in your hand during the

reading time.


true/false test based upon the material you have read."





"l. When instructed to do so tum this page and the blank page to page 6 to




Experiment 9 145


2. On the Answer Sheet provided till in the circle around the letter corresponding



3. You may DQt refer back to the reading material when you are doing the test




may start the test now." Once all students had completed all twenty items in their

multiple choice test and ten true/false items the experimenter instructed them, "put

your pens down and close up the test. All tests and Answer Sheets will now be

collected II•


Performance on the thirty items based on the information in the reading materials

can be seen in Figure 19 (Table 17 shows the means and standard deviations of

those results). The proportions correct data for students may be found in Appendix

16. The most obvious result from viewing the data is that performance was

superior when attention is not split between multiple sources of information. The

comparison between the combined attention condition and split attention condition

was highly significant [F(l,96)=19.88, p<.01] and supported the observation that

the former was superior. This result confirmed the presence of an advantage for

the combining of descriptors and illustration. There was no interaction between

materials and conditions [F(l,96)=0.04, p>.05] which argued against any possible

effects of confounding these two in the previous studies. There was a significant

difference between the materials indicating that Material A was more difficult than

Experiment 9 146

Material B [F(l,96)=11.04, p<.01]. However, this is only of passing interest as in

this and all previous designs the materials were fully counterbalanced.

Figure 19: Percentage correct for each of the four groups of

subjects on questions referring to combined and split

conditions for the two materials

70

60

% 50 correct

40

30

0 Group 1

Material A Combined

Group 2 Material A

Split

Group 3 Material B Combined

Group 4 Material B

Split

Experiment 9 147


multiple choice and true/false items in Experiment 9

Combined Split

Mean Standard Mean Standard

Material Deviation Deviation Average

A 64.7 10.9 53.7 9.7 59.2

B 56.4 15.7 46.4 9.6 51.4

Average 60.6 50.1

Split attention and tme of item

As previously noted the materials had 28 multiple choice items classified as factual

and 12 as inferential. The proportions correct score for each student was calculated

and then an analysis carried out on these proportions. Performance under the split

and combined conditions for each type of item over trials can be seen in Figure 20.

Experiment 9 148

Figure 20: Comparison of student performances factual and

inferential questions on materials

60

50

40

% correct 30

20

10

0

Combined factual

Split factual Combined inferential

Split inferential

Observation of Figure 20 shows a clear advantage between the combined

presentation format over the split format which has already been reported. The

superior performance on the factual questions over the inferential questions

observed in the figure reached statistical significance [F(l,98)=5.75, p<.05]. This

advantage for the factual items has been reliable in all three studies examining item

type. There is a suggestion in Figure 20 that the advantage for the combined format

is greater on factual items than it is on inferential items but the interaction of

attention (combined and split) with types of items (factual and inferential) did not

approach significance in this case [F(l,98)=0.65, p>.05]. In all three studies

examining item type there has been an observed trend for the difference in

performance on the factual items to be greater than on the inferential items and in

the case of Experiment 8 this interaction was statistically significant. This result

Experiment 9 149

might suggest that in future research a more controlled a priori examination of this

question is in order.

Geural Discussion of Experiments 6 to 9 150

General Discussion Experiments 6 to 9

The results of these experiments confirm that technical material consisting of

mutually referring, disparate sources of information that cannot be understood in

isolation should be integrated into a unitary entity. Splitting attention between an

illustration and its key appears to have inhibited integration due to the increased

cognitive load. To make sense of the descriptors adjacent to an illustration a

heavier cognitive load is imposed as a series of continuous mental integrations need

to be made leaving fewer cognitive resources available for learning. Using a

single, integrated source of information, it was found both memory of individual

elements and the ability to make inferences beyond those elements to be facilitated

compared to the frequently used structures that incorporate distinct sources of

information. The reduced cognitive load imposed by having unified source of

information freed cognitive resources and facilitated performance. This was

demonstrated in experiments of both within and between subjects designs. These

results were obtained despite the fact that both the split-source and integrated

materials were identical in information content. Only the format varied and other

than from the theoretical perspective, that variation was trivial.

The attempts to obtain increases in the advantage for the combined format with

reinforcement failed to demonstrate any reliable result. This does not rule out the

possibility that using the combined presentation format leads to increases over a

lengthy period of learning but it does indicate that more than six learning trials are

needed. A further examination of this would require a teaching programme for at

least a full term or perhaps a year in which materials were used with two different

groups where one group received technical illustrations presented as a unified entity

and the other presented with illustrations in the more conventional split format.

However, even with such efforts to rewrite materials and modify teaching strategies

General Discussion of Experiments 6 to 9 151

in the light of the findings reported here, it appears unlikely that such an increasing

advantage for the combined over the split presentation format would be found.

Conventional formats used to present many technical illustrations are not based

upon theoretical considerations and until recently theories made no predictions

concerning ideal formats. Descriptors are commonly used in technical illustrations

with the intended function of aiding comprehension of the illustration. However,

these studies provide evidence that infonnation·presented in this split way may have

unintended consequences whereby cognitive resources are tied up in integrating

multiple sources of information. This suggests that where possible descriptors for

an illustration should be contained within the illustration itself and not presented

adjacent to it as is often done in textbooks and in other situations. As a result of

providing a unified source of information more attention should be given to

comprehending the illustration instead of firstly attending to mentally integrating

multiple sources of information and then attempting to comprehend the content of

this information.

The findings buttress the cognitive theories used to generate the experiments in this

section of the thesis. It was suggested that students learning new material must

acquire schemas. A split-source format requires students to engage in mentally

integrating the disparate sources of information which is an activity that is

irrelevant to schema acquisition and imposes a heavy cognitive load. The finding

that students perform at a higher level when presented with integrated materials

provides a degree of validation to the relevant theories.

The findings also indicate the extent to which cognitive theories can be used to

throw light on instructional procedures. Most procedures used today were

designed before suitable cognitive theories became available. The advent of new

General Discussion of Experiments 6 to 9 152

theories may make some current practices obsolescent. The results indicate one

such set of circumstances.

All four experiments in this section of the thesis were designed as part of normal

classroom procedures. As a consequence, direct implications for instructional

procedures flow clearly from the results. Wherever possible, diagrams and text

should be physically integrated. While integration may not always be possible,

based on the results, it normally should be beneficial. Modification to instructional

procedures and texts in accordance with the cognitive theory outlined and empirical

findings reported could dramatically facilitate learning and increase levels of

competence. Considerable advantages could accrue to both students and teachers

by the use of integrated materials.

General conclusion 153

GENERAL CONCLUSION

The influence of technical illustrations upon student comprehension in geography

has been examined under a number of conditions in the nine experiments. The first

section of this thesis commenced with a study of the effects of technical illustrations

upon the comprehension and recall of expository text. This question was

addressed further in Experiment 2. Previous research on the effects of illustrations

upon the comprehension of text has produced conflicting findings. A number of

studies had found no benefit to the comprehension of text by having accompanying

illustrations (e.g. Donald, 1983; Koenke, 1968, Peeck, 1974; Vernon 1950, 1953,

1954), while other studies have reported benefits (e.g. Hayes & Readence, 1982,

1983; Reid et. al., 1983; Reinking et al., 1988; Tajika et al., 1988). However, as

previously noted, the relationship between the illustrations and text has not been

described in detail in these studies and as a consequence it is not clear as to whether

or not the presence of illustrations improved the comprehension of text. The first

two experiments reported here systematically examined conditions in which text

was presented with a related illustration where there was either no repetition of the

content of the illustration in the text or the same content was presented in text and

illustration. Where there was no repetition of content between the text and an

illustration, the presence of an illustration did not improve the comprehension and

recall of text.

Content presented in both text and illustration in the first study resulted in superior

performance to presentation in text only or illustration only. This was an

interesting result and raised the question of whether repetition of content in two

forms (text and illustration) would be superior to single form repetition as either

text repeated or illustration repeated. In her review of the literature on the use of

illustrations to facilitate the comprehension of text, Schallert ( 1980) suggested that


illustrations may have positive effects when they provide a second access route to

the comprehension of content. That is, the provision of two access routes is likely

to be superior to simple repetition of information in one form such as text repeated.

This suggestion is consistent with Paivio's (1971, 1986) dual coding theory as

discussed in the introduction to the first section of this thesis. Specifically, dual

coding theory argues that memory and cognition are served by two independent but

interconnected codes - one specialized in dealing with nonverbal information and

the other with verbal information. The codes are activated directly by pictures and

words or indirectly by imagery and verbal encoding tasks. Representations in one

code can activate representations in the other. Paivio (1971, 1983, 1986) and

Paivio and Lambert (1981) have suggested that the interdependence of the codes

has additive effects on recall. That is, dual coding theory predicts superior

performance when information is presented in both illustration and text. Reliable

differences favouring the combined form of repetition (text and illustration) over

single form repetition (text repeated or illustration repeated) were found in all

studies testing for this (Experiments 2, 4 and 5). This is a robust and replicable

finding and it provides empirical evidence in support of Paivio's dual coding theory

within the very important paradigm of expository text and technical illustrations.

Technical illustrations were found to be superior to expository text in Experiments

2, 3, 4 and 5. Dual coding theory (Paivio 1971, 1986) predicts that this would be

the case as illustrations are likely to be encoded in the imaginal code and this is

superior in mnemonic value to the verbal code. Further, illustrations of spatial

information are more likely dually encoded in the imaginal and verbal stores in

memory (Paivio, 1986). This is especially the case with the illustrations used in

these studies which had word labels on the drawings. The word labels would be

encoded in the verbal code and images of those labels would most probably also be

encoded in the nonverbal store. The graphic parts of the illustrations would be


predominantly stored in the nonverbal code and could also initiate encoding in the

verbal store (Paivio, 1986; Paivio & Casapo, 1973; Paivio & Lambert, 1981). As

Paivio (1971, 1983, 1986) and Paivio and Lambert (1981) argue, coding in both

stores has additive effects and therefore one would expect that illustrations of the

type used in the studies reported in this thesis would be superior to text of the same

content. This is especially the case as interactions between the two stores with the

type of illustrations used in these studies could be expected. Such interactions

between the two codes improves comprehension and recall (Paivio 1971_, 1986).

Logie and Baddeley (1987) also argue that illustrations would be encoded in the

visuospatial scratchpad (a nonverbal store) and that sub-vocalization of the content

of the illustration may well be encoded in the articulatory loop (a verbal store).

Further theoretical support for illustrations of the kind used in these studies being

superior to text is given when one conceives of interacting verbal and nonverbal

codes causing greater depth of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) and greater

breadth of processing (Craik & Tulving, 1975). The empirical finding that

technical illustrations of spatial content are superior to expository text of the same

content in this thesis provides further evidence for the viability of Paivio's (1971,

1986) dual coding theory.

The second section of this thesis reported the investigations undertaken on

cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988, 1989). The results of those four studies

clearly indicated that presenting information in an illustration which did not split

attention between the illustration and its descriptors led to superior performance

compared to the situation where attention was split between the two sources of

information. Splitting attention between mutually referring disparate sources of

information appears to inhibit integration of the information as cognitive load is

increased (Sweller 1988, 1989). A series of continuous mental integrations need to

be made to comprehend the information and this process leaves fewer cognitive


resources available for learning. Conversely, when descriptors for illustrations

were contained within the diagram mental integration of the information was more

complete and a lighter cognitive load was imposed. Performance was improved as

cognitive resources were freed up by the unified presentation format. This finding

was demonstrated in experiments of both within and between subjects designs and

suggests that cognitive load is reduced and schema acquisition consequently

improved when information is presented as a unified entity and attention is not split

between sources of mutually referring information.

Implications for instruction

The three main findings of the first section of this thesis extend our knowledge of

conditions under which technical illustrations can have positive effects upon

comprehension. Firstly, where there is no overlap in the content of text and a

related illustration, no benefit to the comprehension of the text can be expected.

That is, technical illustrations present information in their own right and are not

mere adjuncts to text. This suggests that at least as much care should be taken in

the preparation of illustrations as is taken with text. The importance of this care

becomes even clearer in light of the second finding that technical illustrations

depicting spatial information were superior to text of the same content. illustrations

were found to have superior mnemonic value to text of the same content. In

technical subjects like geography where information is often conveyed in

illustration, this suggests that greater use of technical illustrations will improve

learning. It is recognimi that there are practical limits to the amount of information

which can be presented in illustrations as much information is more easily

presented in text than illustration. However, where there is a choice between

presenting technical spatial content as text or as illustration then the latter should be

used.


The third major finding of the first section of this thesis that, where possible,

important content should be repeated in two forms (text and illustration) has a

number of significant instructional implications. It suggests that authors and

educators need to identify what key information is to be conveyed and determine if

this information lends itself to be presented in both text and illustration. Again,

while there are practical limits to the amount of information that can be presented in

this way (for example, the size of some textbooks may almost double), the benefits

to comprehension and recall clearly warrant using this dual presentation format

selectively. Where it is possible to present important information as both text and

illustration this will result in superior comprehension and recall.

The main finding of the second section of this thesis was that technical material

which consists of two or more sources of information which need to be mentally

integrated prior to learning should, where possible, be presented as a unified entity.

In particular, technical illustrations with descriptors contained within the diagram

were found to be superior to information presented in a split format as cognitive

load appears to have been reduced and more cognitive resources freed up for

learning. This suggests that where possible instructional formats should be revised

to reduce cognitive load and facilitate learning.

Further research

A number of areas for future research are indicated. Schallert ( 1980) suggested

some of the characteristics of illustrations which would lead to better

comprehension of text. These were that illustrations should represent spatial

information or information relevant to the total message of the text, and/or they

should provide a framework for certain information to be derived from the


illustrations as well as the text. The present studies have indicated that more

research in this area is needed. In particular, replication of superiority of technical

illustrations in a variety of subject areas such as science, history and economics is

desirable. Certainly, the types of materials which best lend themselves to be

presented as illustration rather than as text needs to be delineated. The way in

which authors, publishers and educators use illustrations and the process by which

it is decided what to illustrate are interesting areas for future investigations. The

effects upon comprehension and recall of other types of illustrations such as flow

charts, graphs and photographs warrant future research. Examining views of the

reading audience on presentation formats could also prove to be an interesting area

for further research.

The importance of repetition of text content in illustrations has been demonstrated

in the studies reported in this thesis. The studies reported in this thesis have

examined the two extremes of overlap and have clearly indicated that a 0% overlap

does not improve comprehension whereas there is a robust and reliable

improvement when the degree of overlap is 100% (that is, the illustration and text

have the same content). The question of what degree of overlap between text and

illustration leads to superior comprehension and recall needs to be addressed.

Perhaps an even more important question is what type of content is best

overlapped? In the studies reported in this thesis spatial information was found to

be recalled and comprehended better when repeated in two forms. Other types of

content which do not depict spatial information and can be repeated in text and

illustration need to be investigated.

Repetition of content in printed media only has been examined in this thesis. While

much instruction relies on printed media, very important questions arise as to what

other types of media lend themselves to repetition, and if any particular

combinations of these superior to repetition in the printed media. For example, is


repetition of the content on a computer screen in audio form superior to repetition in

one form (such as viewing the screen twice), and is there any particular form of

repetition superior to others (for example, is repetition of content in a video and text

superior to repetition of content in slides and an oral presentation). Further to this,

if superior forms of repetition for important content are found, questions arise such

as is repetition in three forms (or more) such as printed illustration, text and video

superior to repetition in two forms? In an even broade~ field, questions arise as to

which forms of repetition may be best for people of various backgrounds. For

example, are printed media superior for say professional people who are used to

reading more than perhaps other groups, and a combination of visual and auditory

media superior for some other groups? Are there particular biases in this regard as

a result of variables such as culture, educational background and socio-economic

status? While the main area of interest of the findings reported in this thesis has

been in education, it seems likely that other areas such as the advertising and

entertainment industries may find these results and those of future research in this

area of considerable interest

While repetition of content in expository text and technical illustrations improved

comprehension and recall, it is clear from the empirical research reported in this

thesis that information presented in a unified source is superior to presenting it

where attention was split between disparate sources of information. In terms of

textbook design and other teaching materials it is desirable to present content,

where possible, so that mental integration of several sources of information is

avoided. This has significant implications in terms of repetition of content in

different forms. For example, when important content was repeated as text and

illustration in the first section of this thesis it was presented on one page with one

fonn under the other. Given the findings of the section of this thesis dealing with


schema theory and cognitive load theory, it appears that an even better method of

presenting information in two forms may be to present an illustration with related

text on it ( that is, the two forms of presenting the information are a unified entity

rather than provided as two separate sources of information). Examining how

different instructional materials could be presented as a unified entity could prove to

be very profitable direction of future research in this area.

Possible differences between sexes and different socio-economic groups should

also be examined, but perhaps one of the most important areas of future research

involves the important educational question of longitudinal studies. While any

detailed longitudinal work is beyond the scope of this thesis, the long term

educational consequences of the various advantages reported are of great interest to

educators. Over the short term there were no robust increases. However, it is quite

possible that the advantages reported would be maintained and increased if the

procedures were used in the classroom over a long period of time. That is, the

adoption, where possible, of the advantageous presentations of (i) using technical

illustrations of spatial content instead of expository text, (ii) repeating important

content in two forms (text and illustration), and (iii) presenting technical material in

a combined format only which does not split attention between multiple sources of

information, may all lead to a substantial improvement in performance if used over

a lengthy period of instruction such as a year. This could be tested, for example,

with the split attention material where over a year's instruction one group of

students received all illustrations as a unified entity and another group following the

same course received conventionally formatted technical material. There is the

potential for longitudinal studies to be a most productive area of future research

with very significant benefits for educators and students.

References 161

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Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: Macmillan.

Skinner, B. F. (1963). Behaviorism at fifty. Science, .1.4il, 951-958.

Skinner, B. F. (1975). The steep and thorny way to a science of behavior.

American Psycholo&ist. Jil, 42-49.

References 178

Solman, R. T. (1976). The use of pictures in reading: A particular negative

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Solman, R., Singh, N., & Kehoe, E. (under review). Pictures block the learning

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Solomon, P. R., Goethals, G. R., Kelley, C. M., & Stephens, B. R. (Eds.)

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Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning.

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Educational Psychoioc, .81, 457-466.

Sweller, J., & Cooper, G. A. (1985). The use of worked examples as a substitute

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Sweller, J., Mawer, R., & Howe, W. (1982). Consequences of history-cued and

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References 179

Sweller, I., Mawer, R., & Ward, M. (1983). Development of expertise in

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References 180

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/

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References 181

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Appendkes for Experiment 1

Appendix 1: Reading materials and multiple choice items for

Experiment 1

Rr-adiuu: roarerial for Group 1:

WHAT IS THE HYDROSPHERE?

183

The hydrosphere is the "water-sphere". It includes all the water of the earth,

whether it be frozen, in liquid form, or as a vapour. The hydrosphere includes the

oceans, ice caps, lakes, rivers, swamps, creeks, and water under the ground

(groundwater) and in the air (water vapour). Water is constantly moving from

place to place. It is also changing from state to state (for example, from a liquid

into a gas).

/

The water in the hydrosphere is unevenly distributed. Most of it (97 per cent) is in

the liquid state in the oceans. These cover over 70 per cent of the surface of the

earth. About 2 per cent is in solid form in the ice caps. Less than 1 per cent is in

the form of "fresh" water either on the ground or below the surface.

The movement of water is best illustrated by the diagram below (Figure 1 ). The

water cycle is driven by the radiant energy of the sun and has no beginning or end.

There are a number of processes that are important. Precipitation refers to the

falling of water in the form of rain, snow, hail or dew. Precipitation can only occur

after condensation has taken place. This is the transfer of moisture from a vapour

to a liquid. When water reaches the ground it may run over the surface or be

absorbed (infiltrate) into the soil. Water may evaporate (tum into a vapour) from

any water surface on the earth. It is also transpired from plants and animals into the

atmosphere.

Appendices f or Experiment 1 184

The water cycle shows some of the links that exist between the four main

components of the biophysical environment. The movement of air in the

atmosphere decides where and when precipitation will occur. The layers of rock in

the lithosphere will influence the amount and flow of groundwater. The extent of

plant cover in the biosphere will affect runoff and transpiration.

Once again people have altered this part of the biophysical environment. Runoff

can be reduced or increased by certain uses of the land. The water itself can be

polluted, even in its vapour state. "Acid rain" is formed from industrial air

pollution. This rain has killed forests and water life in many lakes in the northern

hemisphere.

Appendices for Experiment 1 185

Readior materia,l for Group 2:



whether it be frozen, in liquid fonn, or as a vapour. The hydrosphere includes the




into a gas).



earth. About 2 per cent is in solid fonn in the ice caps. Less than 1 per cent is in /


The water cycle is driven by the radiant energy of the sun and has no beginning or

end. There are a number of processes that are important. Precipitation refers to the



to a liquid. Clouds are the visible result of the process of condensation.

Precipitation may occur after clouds have fonned and it results in water returning to

the earth. When water reaches the ground it may run over the surface (overland

flow) or be absorbed (infiltrate) into the soil. Water may be stored on the ground

surface in a depression storage. Water infiltrating into the soil may pass through

the unsaturated zone in the ground and into the saturated zone. The water table is

the dividing line between the unsaturated zone and the saturated zone. The

downward movement of water in the saturated zone is called percolation. Water


stored under the ground surface is called groundwater. Some of the groundwater

may move laterally to return to a water body such as a stream. The flow of water in

the unsaturated zone which moves laterally towards a water body such as a stream

is called interflow. Some of the water stored in depression storages on the ground

surf ace evaporates whilst some of this water may infiltrate into the ground.

Interception of some precipitation by vegetation may stop some of the precipitation

from reaching the ground. Water may evaporate (tum into a vapour) from any

water surface on the earth. It is also transpired from plants and animals into the

atmosphere.



atmosphere decides where and when precipitation will occur. The layers of rock in

the lithosphere will influence the amount and flow of groundwater. The extent of /






hemisphere.


Reading material for Group 3:

WHAT IS TIIB HYDROSPHERE?


whether it be frozen, in liquid form, or as a vapour. The hydrosphere includes the




into a gas).



earth. About 2 per cent is in solid form in the ice caps. Less than 1 per cent is in /


The movement of water is best illustrated by the diagram below (Figure 1 ). The

water cycle is driven by the radiant energy of the sun and has no beginning or end

There are a number of processes that are important. Precipitation refers to the



to a liquid. Clouds are the visible result of the process of condensation.

Precipitation may occur after clouds have formed and it results in water returning to

the earth. When water reaches the ground it may run over the surface (overland

flow) or be absorbed (infiltrate) into the soil. Water may be stored on the ground

surface in a depression storage. Water infiltrating into the soil may pass through

the unsaturated zone in the ground and into the saturated zone. The water table is

the dividing line between the unsaturated zone and the saturated zone. The


downward movement of water in the saturated zone is called percolation. Water

stored under the ground surface is called groundwater. Some of the groundwater

may move laterally to return to a water body such as a stream. The flow of water in

the unsaturated mne which moves laterally towards a water body such as a stream

is called interflow. Some of the water stored in depression storages on the ground

surf ace evaporates whilst some of this water may infiltrate into the ground.

Interception of some precipitation by vegetation may stop some of the precipitation

from reaching the ground. Water may evaporate (tum into a vapour) from any

water surface on the earth. It is also transpired from plants and animals into the

atmosphere.



atmosphere decides where and when precipitation will occur. The layers of rock in /

the lithosphere will influence the amount and flow of groundwater. The extent of






hemisphere.

Appendices for Experiment 1

Multiple choice items for reading materials used in Experiment 1

1. Water in the hydrosphere is

(a) mainly made up of groundwater

(b) constantly moving

(c) mainly in liquid form

(d) not polluted

2. The amount of water either on or below the ground is approximately

(a) 1 % of all water

(b) 2% of all water

(c) 10% of all water

(d) 70% of all water

3. The source of energy driving the water cycle is

(a) precipitation

(b) the sun

(c) gravity

(d) air mass movement

190


4. The process of condensation is the result of

(a) water vapour turning to liquid

(b) moisture vaporizing

(c) the process of transpiration

(d) the process of evaporation

5. The layers of rock in the lithosphere influence the rate of

(a) infiltration

(b) groundwater flow

(c) evaporation

(d) runoff

6. Acid rain results from

(a) acidic water

(b) groundwater pollution

(c) sulphur dioxide

(d) industrial air pollution

7. How many states of water are there in the hydrosphere?

(a) one

(b) two

(c) three

(d) four

191


8. Movements of air in the atmosphere primarily influence

(a) transpiration

(b) precipitation

(c) infiltration

(d) evaporation

192

9. In which hemisphere has acid rain killed more forests and water life in lakes?

(a) northern

(b) southern

(c) eastern

(d) western

10. In the biosphere, what will affect runoff and transpiration?

(a) plant cover

(b) clouds

(c) precipitation

(d) groundwater

11. The unsaturated zone is

(a) below the saturated zone

(b) above the saturated zone

(c) below the biosphere

(d) above the biosphere

Appendices for Experiment I

12. The water cycle derives its name from

(a) the lateral and vertical movements of water

(b) the movement of water along and under the ground back to the oceans

(c) the physical and chemical cycles it causes to operate

(d) the cycle of water in the atmosphere

193

13. The process of water moving downwards through the saturated zone is called

(a) interception

(b) percolation

( C) infiltration

(d) interflow

14. The water table is the dividing line between

(a) the atmosphere and the biosphere

(b) the ground surface and the lithosphere

(c) the saturated zone and the unsaturated mne

(d) water bodies and land

Appendices for Experimenl 1

15. The process of water moving downwards through the unsaturated zone is

called

(a) interception

(b) percolation

( C) infiltration

(d) interflow

16. Water in a depression storage may be lost by

(a) evaporation and transpiration

(b) evaporation and precipitation

(c) evaporation and infiltration

(d) evaporation only

17. lnterflow may result in

(a) water being lost to streams

(b) water becoming groundwater

( c) infiltration

(d) percolation

18. Water running over the surface of the ground is known as

(a) interflow

(b) sub-surface flow

(c) overland flow

(d) astream

194

Appendices for ExperuMnt 1

19. Depression storages are

(a) streams

(b) on the ground surface

(c) underground water

(d) craters

195

20. The diagram which most accurately reflects the processes in the water cycle is

(b)

Evapon1t ion & transpiration

Ground storo es

Evaporation & tnmspi ration

Ground storo es

Candensat ion 1------,• Precipitation

Interception

lnfi 1 tret ion

Candensat ion 1------ Preci pi tat ion

Intercept ion

lnfil tret ion


(c)

(d)

Evaporat 1 on &. transpiration

Ground store es

Eveporet ion &. transpiret ion

Ground store es

196

Candenset ion ~---1•Precipitation

Intercept ion

lnfil tret ion

Candenset ion ~---1•Precipitation

Interception

lnfi 1 tret ion


Appendix 2: Proportions correct data for students in Experiment 1

Qroup 1:

Questions 1 to 10 Questions 11 to 20 on the

Student ml the mi&inal teit iofonnaJimi iD tb, illustratiQD

1 .6 .2

2 .7 .4

3 .5 .6 4 .3 .4

5 .9 .6 6 .8 .6 7 .8 .5 8 .8 .2

9 .8 .6 10 .7 .4

11 .7 .5 12 .5 .5 13 .6 .3 14 1 .6 15 .4 .3 16 .9 .5 17 .4 .1 18 .8 .4 19 .7 .5 20 .8 .6 21 .8 .1 22 .9 .3 23 .4 .2 24 1 .7 25 .9 .6


Proportions correct data for each student:

Grogp2:


Student m the Q[i&iJlal tcit informatiml in the ill11stmti2n 1 .7 .5 2 .5 .2 3 .7 .1 4 .6 .3 5 .9 .2 6 .9 .5 7 .5 .2 8 .8 .7 9 .6 .2

10 .7 .6 11 .8 .3 12 .7 .4 13 .8 .5 14 .8 .2 15 .5 .3 16 1 .6 17 .8 .6 18 .5 .4 19 .8 .3 20 .5 .4 21 .6 .2 22 .6 .4 23 .7 .7 24 .5 .2 25 1 .6


Proportions correct data for each student:

Group 3:


Student QD the ori&inal tcxt infmmatiQD in the illustratiQn 1 .7 .7 2 .8 .6 3 .5 .3 4 .5 .2 5 .9 .6 6 .6 .3 7 .9 .7 8 .7 .6 9 .5 .4

10 .5 .6 11 .6 .7 12 .9 .7 13 .7 .9 14 .7 .5 15 .7 .4 16 .8 .5 17 .8 .7 18 .5 .2 19 .8 .6 20 .8 .5 21 .6 .4 22 .6 .9 23 .6 .6 24 .7 .5 25 .9 .6



Experiment 2

Rr:adin~ material for Group 1:

A cross section from A to C Height

in metres

A 60 Jogger

50

40

30

20

10

riwn

lf--Floodplai n { 4.Slcm)---.!

0 2.5 5 7.5 Distance in lcilome1res

Vertical exaggeration = 1 00

Average gradient from A to B = 1 :21 5

Average gradient from B to C = 1 :750

10 12.5

201

Catti Mesa

l4-2km overall

15


Height A cross section from B to D

in metres

60

50

40

30

20

10 River terrace Floodplain ...-i (4.5km overall)

0 2.5

Catti

5 7.5 Distance in kilome1res

Vertical exaggeration = 100


Average gradient from C to D = 1 :270

10

Market gardens

Det\ .:.I

12.5

202

15


Readior material for Group 2:

A cross section from A to C

The horizontal distance covered by this cross section is 15km. The vertical scale

goes from Oto 60 metres. The vertical exaggeration is 100. The average gradient

from point A to point B, a distance of 7.5km is 1:215. The average gradient from

point B to point C, a distance of7.5.km is 1:750.

Point A and Jogger Town are atop Christies Bluff which rises 27m above the river

terrace below. About half of the river terrace is covered with medium scrub and an

orchard occupies the remainder. There is then a slope down to the flood plain.

Dense scrub covers this slope. Adam Town is found on the left hand side of this

floodplain adjacent to Burke River. On the right hand side of Burke River is a

slope covered in medium scrub. This gives way to a river terrace.

Point B is on the left hand side of the river terrace on which wheat is grown. The

overall width of the floodplain is 4.5 km. On the right hand side of the floodplain

Dawson Butte rises to a height of 16m above the river terrace. A remnant rainforest

is found atop the butte and scattered scrub on its left hand slope and no vegetation

on its right hand slope. At the base of the right hand slope is Angel Cavern. There

is then an area of medium scrub before King Lake. This lake's right hand side

gives way to Catti Mesa. The left hand slope of the mesa is covered with medium

scrub. Corn is grown atop the mesa which measures 2km in width overall. Point

C is halfway across the mesa.


A cross section from B to D


goes from O to 60 metres. The vertical exaggeration is 100. The average gradient

from point B to point C, a distance of 7 .5km is 1:750. The average gradient from

point C to point D, a distance of 7 .5km is 1 :270.








scrub. Com is grown atop the mesa which measures 2km in width overall. Point


From Point C across the remainder of the mesa and down its right hand slope corn

is grown. There is then a short flat area on which Tomlin's farmhouse is located,

overlooking Bryce Canyon. The canyon has no plants in it. On the other side of

the canyon on a plain of the same elevation as the farmhouse is the township of

Denton. Market gardening is then found on the remainder of this plain. Sector Hill

rises 53m from this plain. On its left hand side is Kugar State Forest. Point D is

atop this hill.


Ret!dine roarecW for Group 3:

Height

60

40

30

20

10


Remnant

205

Catti Mesa

lf-Floodplai n ( 4.Skm)---.i lf..2km overall

0 2.5 5 7.5 Di sta nee i n kilo me1 res


Average gradient from A to B = 1 :215



10 12.5



from point B to point C, a distance of 7 .5km is 1 :750. The average gradient from



15








scrub. Corn is grown atop the mesa which measures 2km in width overall. Point


From Point C across the remainder of the mesa and down its right hand slope corn

is grown. There is then a short flat area on which Tomlin's farmhouse is located,

overlooking Bryce Canyon. The canyon has no plants in it. On the other side of

the canyon on a plain of the same elevation as the farmhouse is the township of

Denton. Market gardening is then found on the remainder of this plain. Sector Hill

rises 53m from this plain. On its left hand side is Kugar State Forest. Point Dis

atop this hill.


Bradinr material for Group 4:

A cross section from B to C

60

50

Height 40 in

metres 30

20

10 River terrace

0

Floodplai n41 ( 4 .Skm overa 11)

2.5 5

Distance in kilometres


l4-2km (overall)

7.5

207


Readine: material for Group 5:




from point B to point C, a distance of 7 .5km is 1:750. The average gradient from




Dawson Butte rises to a height of 16m above· the river terrace. A remnant rainforest





scrub. Com is grown atop the mesa which measures 2km in width overall. Point


Appendices for Experinumt 2

Multiple choice items for Experiment 2

Multiple choice items forGroqps 1. 2 and 3:

1. The width of the mesa is

(a) 2.0km

(b) 4.5km

(c) 5.0km

(d) 7.5km

2. The number of towns in the cross section from B to C is

(a) 0

(b) 1

(c) 2

(d) 3

3. The name of the town near the cavern is

(a) Jogger

(b) Adam

(c) Denton

(d) not given


4. The type of natural vegetation between Christies Bluff and the river is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) scattered and medium scrub

(c) medium and dense scrub

(d) dense scrub

5. The height of the butte is

(a) 16m

(b) 27m

(c) 53m

(d) not stated

6. The number of towns in the cross section from A to C is

(a) 0

(b) 1

(c) 2

(d) 3

7. The average gradient from B to C is

(a) 1:270

(b) 1:750

(c) 1:1500

(d) not stated

210


8. The natural feature in front of Tomlin's Farmhouse facing Sector Hill is

(a) ariver

(b) alake

(c) amesa

(d) acanyon

9. The average gradient from A to B is

(a) 1:215

(b) 1:270

(c) 1:750

(d) not stated

10. The type of vegetation on the sides of the butte is

(a) scattered scrub



(d) dense scrub

11. The height of Christies Bluff is

(a) 16m

(b) 27m

(c) 53m

(d) not stated

211


12. The type of natural vegetation between B and the butte is

(a) scattered scrub



(d) dense scrub

13. The type of vegetation atop the butte is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) rainforest

212

14. The types of activities of people likely to be affected by floods from the river

are

(a) agriculture only

(b) urban only

(c) both agriculture and urban

(d) none

15. The number of towns in the cross section from C to D is

(a) 0

(b) 1

(c) 2

(d) 3

Appendices for Experinuml 2

16. The width of the floodplain is

(a) 2.0km

(b) 4.5km

(c) 5.0km

(d) 7.5km

17. The name of the canyon is

(a) Catti

(b) Denton

(c) Kugar

(d) Bryce

18. The type of agricultural activity between Christies Bluff and the river is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) maize

(d) orchard

19. The type of vegetation immediately beside the lake is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) rainforest

213


20. The average gradient from C to D is

(a) 1:270

(b) 1:750

(c) 1:1500

(d) not stated

21. The natural features either side of the butte at its base are

(a) a river terrace and a cavern

(b) a talus slope and a river terrace

(c) a cavern and a cliff

(d) a lake and a talus slope

22. The type of agricultural activity between B and the butte is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) maize

(d) orchard

23. The name of the State Forest is

(a) Catti

(b) Denton

(c) Kugar

(d) Bryce

214

Appenmces for Experiment 2

24. The type of agricultural activity between the canyon and the hill is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) mai7.e

(d) market gardens

25. The type of agriculture at the foot of Sector Hill is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) rainforest

26. The type of crop grown between on the mesa is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) mai7.e

(d) market gardens

27. The name of the river is

(a) Adam

(b) Jogger

(c) Burke

(d) Dawson

215


28. The name of the lake is

(a) Angel

(b) Dawson

(c) Catti.

(d) King

29. The natural feature at the base of Christies Bluff is

(a) a river terrace

(b) a talus slope

(c) acavern

(d) alake

30. The name of the cavern is

(a) Angel

(b) Dawson

(c) Catti.

(d) King

31. The name of the town atop Christies Bluff is

(a) Adam

(b) Jogger

(c) Burke

(d) Dawson

216


32. The height of Sector Hill is

(a) 16m

(b) 27m

(c) 53m

(d) not stated

3 3. The type of vegetation immediately beside the river is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) rainforest

217

34. The types of activities of people likely to be affected by rockfall from the butte

are


(b) urban only

(c) both agriculture and urban

(d) none

35. The name of the butte is

(a) Adam

(b) Jogger

(c) Burlce

(d) Dawson

Appendices for Expe~nt 2

Multiple choice items for Groyps 4 and 5:

1. The number of towns in the cross section from B to C is

(a) 0

(b) 1

(c) 2

(d) 3

2. The height of the butte is

(a) 16m

(b) 27m

(c) 53m

(d) not stated

3. The average gradient from B to C is

(a) 1:270

(b) 1:750

(c) 1:1500

(d) not stated

218


4. The type of vegetation on the sides of the butte is

(a) scattered scrub



(d) dense scrub

5. The type of natural vegetation between B and the butte is

(a) scattered scrub



(d) dense scrub

6. The type of vegetation atop the butte is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) rainforest

7. The width of the floodplain is

(a) 2.0km

(b) 4.5km

(c) 5.0km

(d) 7.5km

219


8. The type of vegetation immediately beside the lake is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) rainforest

9. The natural features either side of the butte at its base are

(a) a river terrace and a cavern

(b) a talus slope and a river terrace

(c) a cavern and a cliff

(d) a lake and a talus slope

10. The type of agricultural activity between B and the butte is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) maize

(d) orchard


(a) Angel

(b) Dawson

(c) Catti

(d) King

220


12. The name of the cavern is

(a) Angel

(b) Dawson

(c) Catti

(d) King

13. The width of the mesa is

(a) 2.0km

(b) 4.5km

(c) 5.0km

(d) 7.5km

14. The types of activities of people likely to be affected by rockfall from the

butte are


(b) urban only

( c) both agriculture and urban

(d) none

15. The name of the butte is

(a) Adam

(b) Jogger

(c) Burke

(d) Dawson

221



Pro.portions correct data for overlap.pin~ material for Groqp 1:

Time of trial after reading material:

Smdcot ImmediiU~ A~"klater A month later 1 .733 .533 .333

2 .333 .267 .2

3 .467 .6 .2

4 .6 .533 .533

5 .067 .2 .2

6 .2 .4 .4

7 .267 .133 .267

8 .133 .067 .2

9 .4 .133 .467

10 .4 .4 .467

11 .2 .467 .6

12 .4 .333 .333

13 .333 .333 .333

14 .867 .733 .733

15 .4 .2 .333

16 .6 .6 .333 17 .467 .533 .2

18 .4 .533 .4

19 .533 .533 .533

20 .533 .533 .6

21 .467 .333 .2

22 .533 .267 .333 23 .4 .267 .267 24 .533 .4 .267 25 .533 .467 .333 26 .467 .733 .6

AppentHces for Experiment 2 223

Pmportions correct data for overlappin& material for Group 2:


S1W1S311 Immedi31' A week later Amnthlatei:

1 .267 .4 .2

2 .267 .067 .133

3 .533 .4 .467

4 0 0 .2

5 .267 .533 .4

6 .533 .533 .467

7 .4 .333 .533

8 .333 .2 .2

9 .2 .4 .267

10 .4 .267 .4

11 .733 .667 .467

12 .2 .4 .2

13 .667 .6 .6

14 .533 .533 .4

15 .2 .333 .333

16 .2 .4 .2

17 .267 .267 .333 18 .267 .333 .267

19 .467 .4 .4

20 .467 .133 .333

21 .333 .533 .067

22 .267 .267 .4

23 .2 .2 .333

24 .467 .533 .533 25 .4 .533 .2 26 .133 .2 .067


Proportions correct data for overlam,in& material for Group 3:


Smdcot Immediil~ A~~klil~ ADJ.Qmbliltci: 1 .267 .333 .133

2 .4 .2 .267

3 .333 .267 .333

4 .4 :2 .267

5 .6 .467 .133

6 .467 .4 .267

7 .267 .533 .267

8 .867 .333 .733

9 .667 .467 .533

10 .467 .4 .2

11 .2 .133 .2

12 .667 .733 .8

13 .533 .533 .667

14 .333 .267 .333

15 .8 .867 .8

16 .467 .333 .533

17 .6 .533 .267

18 .733 .8 .6

19 .4 .133 .133

20 .333 .267 .333

21 .4 .333 .4

22 .2 .267 .333

23 .6 .6 .2

24 .667 ·.467 .267 25 .267 .467 .467

26 .467 .267 .133


Proportions correct data for overlappin& material for Oroyp 4:


Student Immedi= A~eeklater A month la=: 1 .267 .267 .267

2 .8 .467 .6

3 .667 .8 .667

4 .533 .267 .6

5 .6 .6 .533

6 .8 .667 .4

7 .8 .733 .6

8 .867 .8 .6

9 .8 .667 .467

10 .533 .333 .6

11 .667 .467 .6

12 .6 .467 .4

13 .867 .667 .467

14 .533 .533 .333

15 .6 .6 .667

16 .667 .667 .667

17 .733 .667 .6

18 .6 .533 .6

19 .733 .667 .8

20 .533 .6 .133

21 .333 .267 .4

22 .733 .267 .467

23 .6 .533 .6

24 .667 .667 .4

25 .8 .6 .533

26 .6 .733 .533

Appendices for ExperbMnt 2 226

Pmportions correct data for overlappin& mareria1 for Groyp 5:


Student Immediille A»:eekla~ A month latsa: 1 .667 .533 .4

2 .4 .533 .267

3 .733 .667 .467

4 .467 .467 .267

5 .333 .133 .133

6 .467 .4 .333

7 .2 .267 .133

8 .6 .4 .333

9 .467 .133 .067

10 .333 .133 .333

11 .667 .933 .4

12 .6 .6 .267

13 .4 .267 .133

14 .4 .2 .467

15 .467 .267 .533

16 .6 .467 .467

17 .4 .133 .133

18 .733 .533 .533

19 .533 .533 .333

20 .467 .4 .533

21 .133 .267 .2

22 .267 .4 .267

23 .4 .4 .267

24 .6 .333 .333 25 .267 .4 .2

26 .667 .4 .467


Unigpe material

Prqportions correct data for unigpe material for Groyp 1:

Trial jmmediatelY after readinK material Trial one week later

Student Wustration 1 Wusttation 2 lliustration 1 mustration 2 1 .4 .6 .7 .3

2 .6 .2 .5 .9

3 .3 .3 .4 .1

4 .7 .7 .6 .5

5 .7 .2 .6 .1

6 .8 .7 .4 .4

7 .1 .2 .2 .2

8 .6 .7 .5 .8

9 .5 .2 .6 .4

10 .2 0 .6 .3

11 .2 .1 .1 .1

12 .7 .2 .3 .2

13 .3 .6 .4 .2

14 .3 .5 .3 .3

15 .5 .3 .5 .5

16 .2 .4 .5 .4

17 .5 .4 .4 .3

18 .2 0 .5 .2

19 .3 .7 .3 .6

20 .7 .6 .6 .3

21 .3 .1 .2 .3

22 .4 .5 .5 .5

23 .1 .4 .1 .2

24 .5 .3 .7 .7

25 .5 .5 .1 .1

26 .4 .3 .5 .2


PrQportions cmxecr data for unigpe material for Groqp 2:

Trial immediatelY after readin& material Trial one week later

Student W:usimtioo 1 illustration 2 llwsimtioo l lliustmtion 2 1 .4 .2 .5 .5 2 .3 .2 .3 .3 3 .6 .7 .6 .5 4 .4 0 .3 .2 5 .2 .6 .1 .2 6 .6 .2 .2 .3 7 .3 .2 .2 .4

8 .6 .3 .3 .3 9 .6 .2 .4 .2

10 .6 .3 .5 .4

11 .2 .5 .4 .3 12 .2 .3 .5 .2 13 .1 .4 .5 .4

14 .4 .1 .2 .2 15 .4 .4 .4 .5 16 .6 .3 .5 .2 17 .3 .6 .5 .3 18 .8 .2 .2 .1 19 .3 .3 .4 .2 20 .5 .4 .5 .2 21 .5 .6 .2 .3 22 .2 .3 .3 .4

23 .5 .3 0 .4

24 0 .5 .4 .5 25 .4 .3 .5 .5 26 .5 .1 .3 .1


PrQportions correct data for unique material for Group 3:

Trial immed,iatel,v after reudin& material Trial one week later

Student Wustration l m:ustration 2 Dl:ustration 1 Ill:ustration 2 1 .4 .7 .2 .4

2 .4 .9 .2 .9

3 .5 .7 .3 .2

4 .6 .5 .1 .4

5 .5 .2 .3 .5

6 .2 .6 .5 .8

7 .3 .5 .4 .3

8 .4 .4 .6 .5

9 .4 .4 .4 .3

10 .1 .4 .1 .3

11 .4 .5 .4 .4

12 .3 .6 .2 .5 13 .2 .6 .4 .6 14 .6 .3 .5 .3 15 .3 .4 .2 .5

16 .6 .2 .4 .3 17 .3 .5 .2 .7 18 .4 .2 .3 0 19 .2 0 .4 .4

20 .4 .1 .2 .4 21 .1 .2 .4 .3 22 .1 .1 .3 .1 23 .5 .2 .5 .1 24 .3 .3 .3 .2 25 .2 .7 .2 .5 26 .4 .5 .4 .5



Experiment 3

ILeadin& materials and multiple choice items for condition II:

60

50 H•ight

in m•tns 40

30

20

10

0

60

50 Height

in m•tres 40

30

20

10

0

A cross section from Lake Reed to Destown

Spinifex &

Morgan's Beach Reed

Lake \SLSC Reed +

100

... ~ - Destown C:::, Cirrus clouds .---~ .........

Shrubs &

Averag• gradient = 1 :10.5

200 300 400 Distance in metres

Hammond Cliff__. (41 m high)

'\Lake Carter

(29m wide)

500


C) Cum~s clou~s ... ~ - Destown C:::, Cirrus clouds .---~ .........

(- -) Shrubs & Hammond - - Cliff__. (41m high)

Morgan's Beach Reed

'\Lake 1.a1<o \ Sl.sc Rted Carter

+ Avtrag• gradi•nt • 1 :10.5 (29m wide)

100 200 300 400 500 Distance in metres


Multiple choice items for condition II

1. The name of the SLSC

(a) Hammond

(b) Carter

(c) Reed

(d) Gottom

2. The name of the bridge is

(a) Hammond

(b) Carter

(c) Reed

(d) Gottom

3. The types of activities of people found in this area are

(a) primary industry, recreation and urban

(b) secondary industry, mining and urban

( c) secondary industry, transport and tertiary industry

(d) not stated

231

Appendices for Expe~nl 3

4. The type of vegetation atop the foredune is

(a) spinifex and marram grasses

(b) shrubs and woodlands

(c) pampas grass

( d) non existent

5. The name of the town atop the cliff is

(a) Ridley

(b) Morgan

(c) Hammond

(d) Destown

6. The name of the cliff is

(a) Ridley

(b) Morgan

(c) Hammond

(d) Destown

7. The type of clouds seen in this cross section are

(a) cimis and cumulus

(b) cumulus and stratus

(c) cumulo-nimbus

(d) not given

232

Appendices for Experil'Mnt 3

8. The horiwntal distance covered by the cross section is

(a) 200m

(b) 250m

(c) 500m

(d) 550m

9. The width of the hind dunes is

(a) 60m

(b) 80m

(c) 100m

(d) not stated

10. The vertical scale of the cross section goes to a maximum of

(a) 40m

(b) 60m

(c) 100m

(d) 180m

11. The type of natural vegetation on the right side of the hind dunes is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) spinifex and merram grasses

(c) shrubs and woodlands

(d) pampas grass

233


12. The height of the foredune is

(a) 16m

(b) 29m

(c) 38m

(d) 41m

13. The average gradient is

(a) 1:10.5

(b) 1:15.5

(c) 1:165

(d) not stated

14. The type of vegetation on the beach side of the foredune is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) spinifex and merram grasses

(c) shrubs and woodlands

(d) pampas grass

15. The number of lakes in the cross section is

(a) 1

(b) 2

(c) 3

(d) 4

234


16. The type of agriculture next to a lake is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) maize

(d) orchard

17. The natural feature on the left hand side of the foredune is

(a) a hind dune

(b) ahill

(c) aplain

(d) abeach

18. The type of vegetation on the beach is

(a) spinifex and merram grasses


(c) pampas grass

(d) non existent

19. The width of the Lake Carter is

(a) 16m

(b) 29m

(c) 38m

(d) not stated

235


20. The height of the cliff is

(a) 16m

(b) 29m

(c) 38m

(d) 41m

236


Reudin~ materials and multiple choice items for condition I:

A cross section from Macadamia nut plantation to Kola Resort

180

160 Height

in metns 140

120

100

Average gradient= 1 :160

1.5 2 2.5 3 Distance in kilometres


Multiple choice items for condition I


(a) Castle

(b) Stellar

(c) Kola

(d) Pierce

2. The type of vegetation on the walls of the canyon is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) non existent


(a) 1:10

(b) 1:120

(c) 1:160

(d) not stated

238


4. The type of agricultural immediately beside the mountain is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) maize

(d) lucerne

5. The type of crops grown include

(a) maize and wheat

(b) wheat and corn

(c) Macadamia nuts and lucerne

(d) oats and potatoes

6. The number of towns in the cross section is

(a) 0

(b) 1

(c) 2

(d) 3

7. The type of vegetation on the side of the cliff is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) non existent

239

Appendices for Expe~nt 3

8. The type of vegetation on the left hand side of the mountain is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) spinifex grass

(d) bidou

9. The height of the cliff is

(a) 25m

(b) 43m

(c) 58m

(d) not stated

10. The name of the canyon is

(a) Joan

(b) Ford

(c) Barry

(d) Rick

11. The height of the mountain a.s.l. is

(a) 165m

(b) 185m

(c) 205m

(d) not stated

240

Appendices for ExperbMnt 3

12. The position of the river in bottom of the canyon is

(a) on the right hand side

(b) on the left hand side

(c) in the centre

(d) not stated


(a) primary industry and urban

(b) primary industry only

(c) secondary industry and tertiary industry

(d) not stated


(a) cirrus

(b) cumulus

(c) nimbus

(d) not stated

15. The type of natural vegetation between the mountain and the the canyon is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) woodland

241


16. The name of the resort is

(a) Rick

(b) Kola

(c) Ford

(d) not stated


(a) 40m

(b) 60m

(c) 100m

(d) 180m

18. The name of the road adjacent to the town is

(a) Joan

(b) Ford

(c) Barry

(d) Rick

19. The type of material being emitted from the mountain is

(a) ash

(b) smoke

(c) ash and smoke

(d) ash smoke and lava

242


20. The horizontal distance covered by the cross section is

(a) 2.3km

(b) 3.5km

(c) 4.6km

(d) 5.5km

243


Rradinr materia,ls and multiple choice items for corutition TI:

A cross section from Josh Town to Clifton Plains

The horizontal distance covered by this cross section is 550 metres. The vertical

scale goes from Oto tiO metres. The average gradient is 1:15.5.

Josh Town is on the left hand side of the cross section. As one moves across the

cross section there is an area of corn then Janice's farmhouse. This is adjacent to

Sefter Quarry which is 10m wide and in which there is no vegetation. To the right

of the quarry is Jamison Hill which is 120 metres high. On the left hand side of

this hill there is scattered scrub and on the right hand side there is dense scrub. The

hill gives way to a plain on which woodlands are found. On the edge of this plain

is Frog Punt which crosses Colader River. To the right of the river is Clifton

Plains which are 200m wide. On these plains oats are grown and there is a

windmill which is 15m high. Stratus clouds can be seen in this cross section.

A cross section from Josh Town to Clifton Plains


scale goes from Oto tiO metres. The average gradient is 1:15.5.

Josh Town is on the left hand side of the cross section. As one moves across the

cross section there is an area of corn then Janice's farmhouse. This is adjacent to

Sefter Quarry which is 10m wide and in which there is no vegetation. To the right

of the quarry is Jamison Hill which is 120 metres high. On the left hand side of

this hill there is scattered scrub and on the right hand side there is dense scrub. The


hill gives way to a plain on which woodlands are found. On the edge of this plain

is Frog Punt which crosses Colader River. To the right of the river is Clifton

Plains which arc 200m wide. On these plains oats are grown and there is a

windmill which is 15m high. Stratus clouds can be seen in this cross section.

Appelldices for Experiment 3

Multiple choice items for condition TT

1. The type of natural vegetation between the hill and the punt is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) rainforest

(d) woodland

2. The height of the hill is

(a) 10m

(b) 120m

(c) 200m

(d) not stated


(a) 1:10.5

(b) 1:15.5

(c) 1:165

(d) not stated

246


4. The type of vegetation on the sides of the hill is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) scattered and dense scrub


(d) scattered and medium scrub


(a) 0

(b) 1

(c) 2

(d) 3

6. The type of agricultural activity on the plains is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) maize

(d) oats

7. The natural feature either side of the river is

(a) a river terrace

(b) a hill

(c) aplain

(d) not stated

247


8. The type of vegetation in the quarry is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) non existent

9. The width of the quarry is

(a) 10m

(b) 120m

(c) 200m

(d) not stated

10. The height of Jamison Hill is

(a) 10m

(b) 120m

(c) 200m

(d) not stated

11. The name of the river is

(a) Josh

(b) Clifton

(c) Colader

(d) Sefter

248


12. The name of the quany is

(a) Josh

(b) Clifton

(c) Colader

(d) Sefter



(b) secondary industry only

( c) secondary industry and tertiary industry

(d) not stated

14. The type of vegetation atop the hill is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) not stated

15. The name of the fannhouse is

(a) Frog

(b) Janice

(c) Clifton

(d) not stated


16. The name of the plains where the windmill is found are

(a) Frog

(b) Janice

(c) Oifton

(d) not stated


(a) 40m

(b) (,()m

(c) 100m

(d) 180m


(a) 200m

(b) 250m

(c) 500m

(d) ·550m

19. The height of the windmill is

(a) 10m

(b) 15m

(c) 20m

(d) not stated

250



(a) cirrus

(b) cumulus

(c) nimbus

(d) stratus

251


Readior materials and multiple choice items for condition T:

A cross section from Tekay Farm to sand dune

The horizontal distance covered by this cross section is 4.2km. The vertical scale

goes from Oto 180 metres. The average gradient is 1:145.

Tekay Fann grows luceme and is on the left hand side of the cross section on top

of Mt. Kaze (256m a.s.l.). As one moves across the cross section there is an area

of woodland on the side of the hill which gives way to a sugar cane field then a

pineapple plantation. This is adjacent to Barry Canyon which is 100m wide and

has dense scrub on its walls. Gwyder River is at the base of the canyon on its left

hand side. On the right hand rim of the canyon is Diamond Town which has

Massey Road to the right of it. Adjacent to the road on its right is an area of

scattered scrub which has recently experienced a mud flow. To the right of this is

George's Billabong which has a sand dune 85m high on its right covered with

bidou plant.


Multiple choice items for condition T

1. The position of the river in the canyon is

(a) on the right hand side

(b) on the left hand side

(c) in the centre

(d) not stated


(a) cirrus

(b) cumulus

(c) nimbus

( d) not stated


(a) 1:10.5

(b) 1:145

(c) 1:165

(d) not stated

253


4. The horimntal distance covered by the cross section is

(a) 2.3km

(b) 3.8km

(c) 4.2km

(d) 5.5km

5. The type of natural vegetation between the farm and the canyon is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) woodland

6. The height of the mountain a.s.l. is

(a) 145m

(b) 256m

(c) 312m

(d) not stated


(a) 40m

(b) rom (c) 100m

(d) 180m

254


8. The type of mass movement recently experienced near the road is

(a) soil creep

(b) mudflow

(c) land slide

(d) rock fall

9. The type of vegetation on the walls of the canyon is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) non existent

10. The name of the billabong is

(a) Diamond

(b) George

(c) Barry

(d) Massey

11. The height of the sand dune is

(a) 65m

(b) 85m

(c) 105m

(d) 125m

255


12. The name of the road adjacent to the town is

(a) Diamom

(b) George

(c) Bmy

(d) Massey



(b) secondary industry only

( c) secondary industry and tertiary industry

( d) not stated

14. The type of vegetation on the side of the hill next to the farm is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) woodland


(a) 0

(b) 1

(c) 2

(d) 3

256


16. The type of agricultural activity on the Tekay Farm is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) mai2:e

(d) luceme


(a) pineapples and sugarcane

(b) wheat and corn

(c) maize and luceme

(d) oats and potatoes

18. The type of vegetation on the sand dune is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

( c) spinifex grass

(d) bidou

19. The width of the canyon is

(a) 100m

(b) 120m

(c) 200m

(d) not stated

257


20. The name of the river in the canyon is

(a) Gwyder

(b) Bmy

(c) Kaze

(d) not stated

258



Proportions correct data for each student

Student Text Text Illustration Illustration

B.epeat~ Qn~ R~at~ On~

1 .5 .85 .7 .85

2 .5 .45 .6 .8 3 .45 .65 .35 .55 4 .8 .6 .7 .65

5 .2 .35 .7 .75

6 .7 .55 .9 .75

7 .4 .4 .7 .65

8 .6 .85 .6 .7

9 .7 .8 .7 .45

10 .75 .3 .65 .35 11 .7 .9 .8 .8 12 .35 .45 .7 .3 13 .4 .5 .5 .65 14 .45 .8 .95 .85 15 .25 .65 .7 .7 16 .5 .8 .8 .65 17 .3 .4 .65 .65 18 .6 .7 .75 .85 19 .7 .8 .85 .85 20 .55 .7 .85 .95 21 .75 .85 .75 .95 22 .85 .75 .7 .7 23 .6 .55 .5 .75 24 .35 .65 .45 .7



condition TI in Experiment 4

120

100 Htight

in mttrts 80

60

40

20

A cross section from Mt. Gerard to Tass Ocean

0

Cum. ul:us Clow

~ ~.Genrl ..I,. ICe:iwdy Hill

Ra:worest 1 Cym:hit.'s

200

Scatterel slln) Bl'llff ( 16m. q-h) ----~--.,. , Com

Lake Gtol"(ll (80m. wiae)

Avef'181 ~:at= 1:650

400 600 Distance 1n mttrts

800


1000


scale goes from Oto 120 metres. The average gradient is 1:650.

Mt. Gerard is on the left hand side of the cross section and is covered with

rainforest. Kennedy Hill is approximately 60m high and is next to Mt. Gerard.

This hill is covered with scattered shrub. Cynthia's bluff has no vegetation on it

and is 16m high and is on the right hand side of Kennedy Hill. At the foot of the

bluff is Lake George which is 80m wide and there is a dam on right hand side of

the lake. To the right of the lake is a corn field on a gentle slope which gives way

to Grodd River. Next to the river is the town of Smithston. The town runs down

to Palm Beach which is on the shore of Tass Ocean. Cumulus clouds can be seen

over the hills and there is a cumulo-nimbus cloud over the town and the coast in

this cross section.


Multiple choice items for condition TI in Experiment 4:


(a) 1:110

(b) 1:250

(c) 1:650

(d) not stated


(a) Cynthia

(b) George

(c) Kennedy

(d) Gerard

3. The height of the bluff is

(a) 10m

(b) 16m

(c) 80m

(d) not stated

261

Appendices for ExpeTUMnt 4

4. The type of vegetation on the hill is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

( d) rainforest

5. The name of the bluff is

(a) Cynthia

(b) George

(c) Kennedy

(d) Gerard

6. The type of natural vegetation between the mountain and the the canyon is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) woodland


(a) 0

(b) 1

(c) 2

(d) 3

262


8. The name of the beach is

(a) Cynthia

(b) Tass

(c) George

(d) Palm


(a) 60m

(b) 120m

(c) 180m

(d) 200m

10. The name of the ocean

(a) Cynthia

(b) Tass

(c) George

(d) Palm

11. The main types of activities of people found in this area are

(a) farming and urban

(b) secondary industry and service industries

(c) mining and recreation

(d) not stated

263


12. The type of cloud over the coast is

(a) cumulus

(b) cumulo-nimbus

(c) stratus

(d) nimbo-stratus

13. The river is between

(a) a corn field and a town

(b) two hills

(c) a plain and a hill

(d) none of the above

14. The type of agricultural on the slope is

(a) wheat

(b) corn

(c) maize

(d) luceme


(a) 550m

(b) 1100m

(c) 2200m

(d) not stated

264


16. The name of the mountain is

(a) Cynthia

(b) George

(c) Kennedy

(d) Gerard

17. The type of vegetation on the bluff is

(a) scattered scrub

(b) medium scrub

(c) dense scrub

(d) non existent

18. The width of the lake is

(a) 10m

(b) 16m

(c) 80m

(d) not stated

19. The type of cloud above the hills are

(a) cumulus

(b) cumulo-nimbus

(c) stratus

(d) nimbo-stratus

265



(a) mai7.e and wheat

(b) wheat and corn

(c) corn only

(d) wheat only

266



Proportions COITeCt data for trial done immediately after reading materials in

Experiment 4:

Student: Text Text illustration illustration illustration

Rsa,eated Once Rca,eated Once &Text 1 .15 .8 .75 .75 .6

2 .75 .85 .8 .85 .9

3 .45 .4 .65 .75 .8

4 .6 .6 .65 .3 .25

5 .25 .6 .5 .5 .65

6 .65 .9 .95 .95 .95

7 .7 .55 .95 .9 .85

8 .95 .85 .9 .8 .9

9 .35 .7 .55 .55 .65

10 .75 .9 .8 .9 .95

11 .6 .8 .7 .8 1

12 .75 .75 .55 .25 .7

13 .65 .65 .7 .75 .6

14 .55 .5 .45 .5 .6

15 .5 .25 .5 .7 .65

16 .7 .55 .4 .8 .9

17 .55 .65 .9 .65 .85

18 .9 .7 .75 .9 .9

19 .4 .7 .4 .25 .55

20 .6 .45 .65 .9 .8 21 .3 .25 .2 .6 .7 22 .9 .55 .85 .55 .85 23 .8 .75 .9 .95 .9 24 .55 .7 .8 .6 .8 25 .7 .8 .8 .75 .65


Proportions COll'CCt data for trial done one week after reading materials in

Experiment 4:


R~ Once Rca,eated Once &Text 1 .35 .25 .35 .35 .3

2 .3 .3 .3 .15 .2

3 .2 .25 .25 .2 .15

4 .3 .15 .2 .35 .25

5 .3 .2 .3 .2 .25

6 .65 .55 .3 .55 .8

7 .45 .15 .45 .45 .25

8 .7 .5 .25 .2 .25

9 .1 .45 .45 .55 .25

10 .5 .7 .6 .55 .55

11 .4 .5 .4 .4 .4

12 .5 .3 .3 .4 .4

13 .35 .7 .45 .35 .45

14 .25 .3 .3 .05 .3

15 .35 .05 .25 .2 .2

16 .3 .5 .5 .35 .5

17 .55 .45 .35 .6 .5

18 .35 .05 .15 .35 .45

19 .4 .35 .2 .35 .35

20 .2 .5 .3 .35 .3

21 .25 .15 .2 .1 .2

22 .55 .5 .35 .55 .45

23 .7 .55 .65 .6 .5

24 .45 .3 .05 .3 .2

25 .1 .25 .3 .25 .1


Proportions correct data for trial done one month after reading materials in

Experiment 4:


Rca,eated Once Re,peated Once &Text 1 .5 .5 .4 .4 .25

2 .3 .25 .4 .25 .3

3 .25 .25 .15 .2 .45

4 .2 .1 .15 .2 .3

5 .45 .4 .3 .3 .3

6 .3 .35 .25 .2 .2

7 .45 .25 .45 .35 .4

8 .8 .6 .55 .3 .25

9 .3 .35 .5 .25 .25

10 .5 .45 .4 .6 .35

11 .3 .25 .3 .3 .3

12 .35 .35 .45 .4 .35

13 .5 .4 .55 .4 .35

14 .4 .25 .35 .3 .1

15 .2 .35 .45 .3 .3

16 .45 .35 .45 .35 .4

17 .35 .4 .6 .4 .65

18 .45 .45 .35 .4 .45

19 .4 .15 .15 .2 .35

20 .3 .35 .25 .2 .15

21 .25 .15 .15 .3 .25

22 .4 .55 .4 .4 .35

23 .55 .65 .55 .55 .55

24 .2 .15 .35 .25 .35

25 .3 .45 .2 .2 .45



Experiment 5

Material A used in &periment 5:

Students were given either the text below twice (TT) or once (T) or the illustration

twice (II) or once (I) or the combined format shown {TI)


As can be seen in Figure 1 the water cycle is driven by the radiant energy of the sun

and has no beginning or end. There are a number of processes that are important.

Precipitation refers to the falling of water in the form of rain, snow, hail or dew.

Precipitation can only occur after condensation has taken place. This is the transfer

of moisture from a vapour to a liquid. Clouds are the visible result of the process

of condensation. Precipitation may occur after clouds have formed and it results in

water returning to the earth and is influenced by movements of air in the

atmosphere. Water can be intercepted before it reaches the ground by vegetation.

When water reaches the ground it may run over the surface (overland flow) or be

absorbed (infiltrate) into the soil. Water may be stored on the ground surface in a

depression storage. Water infiltrating into the soil may pass through the

unsaturated zone in the ground and into the saturated zone. The water table is the

dividing line between the unsaturated zone and the saturated zone. The downward

movement of water in the saturated zone is called percolation. Water stored under

the ground surface is called groundwater. Some of the groundwater may move

laterally to return to a water body such as a stream. The flow of water in the

unsaturated zone which moves laterally towards a water body such as a stream is

called interflow. The layers of rock in the lithosphere will influence the amount and

271 Appendices for Experiment 5

flow of groundwater. Some of the water stored in depression storages on the ground surface evaporates whilst some of this water may infiltrate into the ground. Interception of some precipitation by vegetation may stop some of the precipitation from reaching the ground. Water may evaporate (turn into a vapour) from any water surf ace on the earth. It is also transpired from plants and animals into the atmosphere. Less than 1 per cent of water is either on the ground or below the

surface.

in1en:e0aon

9Ya00ra:!IOn

F19u,. 1: The ·.ano cnase at the wa• cyc:le

Please note: The multiple choice items for Material A may be found in Appendix 1


Material B used in &periment 5

Students were given either the text below twice (TI') or once (T) or the illustration

twice (II) or once (I) or the combined format shown (TI)



goes from O to 60 metres. The vertical exaggeration is 100. The average gradient

from point A to point B, a distance of 7.5km is 1:215. The average gradient from

point B to point C, a distance of 7 .5km is 1:750.

Point A and Jogger Town are atop Christies Bluff which rises 27m above the river

terrace below. About half of the river terrace is covered with medium scrub and an

orchard occupies the remainder. There is then a slope down to the flood plain.

Dense scrub covers this slope. Adam Town is found on the left hand side of this

floodplain adjacent to Burke River. On the right hand side of Burke River is a

slope covered in medium scrub. This gives way to a river terrace.


overall width of the floodplain is 4.5 km. Dawson Butte rises to a height of 16m

above the river terrace. A remnant rainforest is found atop the butte and scattered

scrub on its left hand slope and no vegetation on its right hand slope. At the base

of the right hand slope is Angel Cavern. There is then an area of medium scrub

before King Lake. This lake's right hand side gives way to Catti Mesa. The left

hand slope of the mesa is covered with medium scrub. Com is grown atop the

mesa which measures 2km in width overall. Point C is halfway across the mesa.

Appendices for ExperilMnt 5

Height in

metres A

60 Jogger

40

30

20

10

o

1;...,n

Christies Bluff (27m)

3


lf-Floodplai n ( 4.5km) ~

6 9 Di3tance in kilome1res

Vert;cal exaggeration = 1 00

12

273

Catti

"-2km overall

15

Average gradient from B to C = 1 :750 Average gradient from A to B = 1 :21 5

Please note: The multiple choice items for Material B may be found in Appendix 3


Material C used in &periment 5




Mt. Gerard is on the left hand side of the cross section and is covered with

rainforest. Kennedy Hill is next to Mt. Gerard and is covered with scattered shrub.

Cynthia's bluff is 16m high with no vegetation on it and is on the right hand side of

Kennedy Hill. At the foot of the bluff is Lake George which is 80m wide and there

is a dam on the lake. To the right of the lake is a corn field on a gentle slope which

gives way to Grodci River. Next to the river is the town of Smithston which runs

down to Palm Beach which is on the shore of Tass Ocean. Cumulus clouds can be

seen over the hills and cumulo-nimbus cloud is over the coast in this cross section.


120

100 H•;9ht

in m•tns 80

60

40

20

A cross section from Mt. Gerard to Tau Ocean

0

i,.Gmrt .S, ICe:iway Hill

Ramfor1st 1 CYJlllm's

200

Sc1tter1a s:bn) Bl'llff ( 16a Jua'h)

-.· ~ .. .,. " Cori

Like Geo,ve (80a -we)

Awnge IJ"Amlll = 1:650

400 600 D;sbnc• ,n m•tres

800

275

1000

Please note: The multiple choice items for Material C may be found in Appendix 7


Material D used in Ea,eriment 5



scale goes from Oto ro metres. The average gradient is 1:10.5.

Lake Reed is on the left hand side of the cross section next to Morgan's Beach on

which Reed SLSC is built. A foredune 38m high is adjacent to this and on its

seaward side has spinifex and merram grass and on top and on its landward side

has shrubs and woodland. Hind dunes 100m in width are on the right hand side of

the foredune and these are covered with pampas grass. Gottom Bridge is to the

right of these and it is over Lake Carter which is 28m wide. On the other side of

the lake is Wide Highway which has to its right wheat growing. This gives way to

Ridley Town which is situated at the base of Hammond Cliff which is 41m high.

Atop the cliff on the right hand side of the cross section is Destown. Cumulus and

cirrus clouds can be seen in the cross section.



(::) Cumu~us cl~s .. =-- - Desto'W'n C:::::, Cirrus clouds

60 ,,,,.,.-----(- -) Slv-ubs & Hammond

50 - - Cliff-4 H.ight (41 m high)

in metns 40

30

20 Morgan's Beach Reed

'\Lake '-*•\SI.SC 10 Reed Carter

+ Average gradient = 1 :10.5 (29m 'Wide)

0 100 200 300 400 500 Distance in metres

Please note: The multiple choice items for Material D may be found in Appendix 5


Material E used in &periment 5


The horimntal distance covered by this cross section is 3.5 kilometres. The vertical


Macadamia nut plantation is atop a hill on the left hand side of the cross section.

The hill has dense scrub on its slope. To the right of this is a maze crop followed

by a wheat crop which gives way to scattered scrub on the side of Mt Stellar which

is 165m a.s.l. and 200m wide. Smoke and ash are issuing from the top of this

mountain. On the right hand slope is a woodland which falls away to Ford Canyon

which has scattered scrub on its walls. Castle River is in the base of the canyon on

its right hand side. Adjacent to the canyon is Cess Town and to the right of this is

Rick Hwy. Lake Pierce is the next feature to the right and this is at the base of

Joan's Cliff which is 43m high. Atop the cliff is Kola Resort on the right hand side

of the cross section.



Height in

180

metres 140

120

100

Average gradient= 1 :160

1.5 2 2.5 3 o;stance ;n knometns

279

Please note: The multiple choice items for Material A may be found in Appendix 5

Appenmces for Experiment 5 280

Appendix to: Proportions correct data for students in Experiment 5

Format

Student ll I ll I TI

1 .5 .75 .8 .6 .75

2 .15 .35 .25 .25 .35

3 .3 .55 .35 .7 .75 4 .45 .6 .75 .75 .7

5 .75 .35 .65 .4 .5

6 .6 .75 .85 .75 .55

7 .75 .8 .75 .6 .95

8 .45 .3 .4 .6 .55

9 .35 .35 .45 .5 .6

10 .2 .55 .6 .35 .45

11 .4 .25 .25 .3 .45 12 .35 .3 .6 .7 .75

13 .25 .5 .25 .25 .2

14 .15 .55 .35 .5 .65

15 .5 .35 .5 .45 .6 16 .6 .3 .7 .6 .85 17 .2 .35 .3 .65 .45 18 .6 .55 .45 .55 .5

19 .5 .7 .65 .7 .85 20 .15 .35 .5 .7 .65 21 1 .15 1 .6 .95 22 .4 .8 .5 .7 .8 23 .3 .4 .85 .45 .75 24 .25 .1 .3 .45 .3 25 .25 .15 .2 .25 .3


Appendix 11: Reading materials for Experiment 6

Brading materials for Experiment 6: Combined 1


C:) Cumu:.,us cl~s .. =-- - Destown c=::, Cirrus clouds

60 ,-----""-

(- -) Shrubs & Hammond 50 - - Cliff--4

H•ight (41m high) in

metres 40

30

20 Morgan's BHch RHd

'\Lake u1co \Suic 10 RHd Carter

+ Averag• gradient = 1 :1 0.5 (29m wide)

0 100 200 300 400 500 Distance in metres

Appendices for ExperimJ!nt 6 282

Reodin& materials for E,weriment 6; Split 1

60

50

40

30

20

10

0


C) 6 c:-_----:,

<-- -) -

1

100 200

Key:

1. LakeReed

2. Morgan's Beach

3. ReedSLSC

4. Spinifex & marram grasses

S. Foredune (38m high)

6. Cumulus clouds

7. Shrubs & woodland

8. Pampas grass

9. Gottom Bridge

10. Hind dunes (100m wide)

11. Lake Carter (29m wide)

12. Wide Highway

13. Wheat

14. Ridley Town

15. Hammond Cliff (41m high)

16. Destown

17. Cirrus clouds

=--- 16 c=:::, 17 .--- --- .........

15

12 14--10 ~ 11

300 400 500

Vertical scale: Height in metres

Horizontal scale: Distance in kilometres

Average gradient= 1:10.S


Readin& materials for EXPC{iment 6; Combined 2


180

160 H•ight

in metr•s 140

120

100 scrub

"-Castle Riv•r

1.5 2 2.5 Distanc• in kilometres

Kola R.sort

Joan's '. Cliff---+ (43m high)


Readin& materials for E2ijleriment 6; Split 2


180

160

140

120

100

16

15

12

10

9 "-11

1 1.5 2 2.5

Key:

1. Macadamia nut plantation 12. Cess Town

2. Dense scrub 13. RickHwy

3. Maize 14. Lake Pierce

4. Wheat 15. loan's Cliff (43m high)

5. Scattered scrub 16. Koala Resort

6. Smoke & ash

7. Mt. Stellar (165m a.s.l. & 200m wide)

8. Woodland

9. Scattered scrub

10. Ford Canyon

11. Castle River

Vertical scale: Height in metres

Horizontal scale: Distance in kilometres

Average gradient = 1: 1 (i()

Please note: The multiple choice items for the reading materials used in

Experiment 6 may be found in Appendix 5 conditions II and I.

Appendices for Experbru!nt 6 285

Appendix 12: Proportions correct data for students in

Experiment 6

Proportions correct data on all questions for each student in each of the three trials:

Student Onlerrl. Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3

Presenfadgn* Camhio,d S12lh Camhio,d S:12lil Camhin~ S:12lil 1 S1 C2 .8 .6 .85 .75 .95 .6

2 S1 C2 .75 .85 .85 .9 .75 .45

3 S1 C2 .45 .3 .4 .35 .15 .15

4 S1 C2 .95 .55 1 .9 .8 .6

5 S1 C2 .45 .5 .25 .15 .25 .25

6 S1 C2 .55 .5 .5 .55 .5 .2

7 S1 C2 .75 .8 .8 .8 .65 .55

8 S1 C2 .8 .75 .75 .8 .85 .65

9 S1 C2 .4 .45 .35 .45 .4 .3

10 S1 C2 .3 .5 .5 .45 .25 .3

11 S1 C2 .7 .65 .75 .8 .55 .45

12 C2 S1 .75 .45 .75 .6 .65 .2

13 C2 S1 .75 .45 .75 .8 .6 .65

14 C2 S1 .8 .45 .85 .8 .7 .35 15 C2 S1 .85 .75 .9 .85 .55 .6 16 C2 S1 .85 .55 .9 .65 .6 .25

17 C2 S1 .4 .5 .95 .65 .4 .3 18 C2 S1 .6 .55 .2 .2 .2 .3 19 C2 S1 .6 .45 .65 .55 .55 .75 20 C2 S1 .7 .85 .7 .85 .65 .6 21 C2 S1 .75 .65 .7 .35 .4 .35 22 C2 S1 .7 .55 .9 .75 .65 .85

• Sl, S2, Cl and C2 refer to Material 1 split, Material 2 split, Material 1 combined

and Material 2 combined respectively.


Proportions correct data on all questions for each student in each of the three trials

in Experiment 6 continued:

Student Onb'd Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3

Presenla&ion* Cgmbiocd SPlil Cgmbiocd Split C!Jmbincd Split

23 Cl S2 .8 .7 .65 .7 .65 .5

24 Cl S2 .55 .6 .5 .85 .3 .2

25 Cl S2 .65 .75 .95 .95 .5 .65

26 Cl S2 .35 .6 .6 .4 .15 .75

27 Cl S2 .85 .85 .95 .95 .9 .75

28 Cl S2 .85 .8 .85 .8 .65 .55

29 Cl S2 .55 .65 .85 .85 .75 .3

30 Cl S2 .5 .75 .7 .55 .35 .45

31 Cl S2 .9 .65 .95 .9 .9 .15

32 Cl S2 .45 .5 .6 .65 .2 .55

33 Cl S2 .75 .8 .95 .8 .75 .6

34 S2 Cl .45 .35 .35 .5 .35 .2

35 S2 Cl .85 .8 .75 .95 .55 .2

36 S2 Cl .7 .45 .6 .7 .6 .55

37 S2 Cl .75 .8 .7 .9 .35 .75

38 S2 Cl .65 .5 .7 .65 .35 .6

39 S2 Cl .8 .8 .95 .95 .85 .65

40 S2 Cl .6 .7 .55 .8 .55 .45 41 S2 Cl .65 .3 .7 .6 .2 .55

42 S2 Cl .6 .65 .85 .45 .8 .55

43 S2 Cl .6 .65 .8 .8 .45 .2 44 S2 Cl .8 .6 .9 .7 .55 .55

* Sl, S2, Cl and C2 refer to Material 1 split, Material 2 split, Material 1 combined

and Material 2 combined respectively.

• ..:_,_ &: tut it~ms for &penmenu 1• 8 &: 9 R~ading mtJll!rlUIJ 287

Appendix 13: . I nd test items for Experiments 7' Reading mater1a s a .

8 and 9

Material 1 combined wesematlon usr,d in Experiments 7, 8 and 2:

Tabll

. . -. - . .. - .• -cli:lllal IY jca ,r .

A,,. ,.,, F

Jatm's pier 111d ~

, ,

I . ! ! i I i

. I

Readi.ng materials &: test items for Experiments 7, 8 &: 9 288

Matqial 1 m)it izresentation used in Experiments 7, 8 and 9=

7

~-·--------.._ ..

/ li

------·--,,,.-----~

__ JJ ,,, _.,,

..

--

1 c.omsa11 ..... 2Clilflllllila 3"Baniaalla ,_._,__,_ S Sllipblf I , ... ....

/

71*k'a ........ ... ......... '' ........... ... lOJala'lpilrad · ,..

' .

11 I :hi+..,.,- 21 B...,,, 12 MailJIINlla-1 we 22 S.lft:ll(ll-u.L) 13 Uall I f •• ....... 23 S.8-*(16-uJ.) 14 1l•a . I~ 24 ..,_ Slawlll 150.,. %STmllapa 16 Galf-- 26 Ulilils dlln:la 17 ,_ 27 J ·,: pi I a 11 A q• i:,C ·22 21 UaaldJifl 19 ..... Sdlaal 2' ..... 20 le I . dlllld 30 ...,.lacla(l75--....

Reading materials cl test items for Experiments 7, 8 cl 9

Muhjple choice items for EXl}Criments 7, 8 and 2; Material 1

1. The church building belongs to which denomination?

(a) Anglican

(b) Catholic

(c) Presbyterian

(d) Uniting

2. The name of the pier is

(a) Robyn's

(b) George's

(c) John's

(d) Clair's

3. A type of human activity nQ1 shown in the diagram is

(a) mining

(b) fishing

(c) fanning

( d) processing

289

Reading materials & test items for Experiments 7, 8 & 9

4. The exact type of vegetation on the sand dunes is



(c) grasses and trees

(d) not named

5. The cultural feature above the talus slope is

(a) a factory

(b) achurch

(c) a coast guard station

( d) a lighthouse

6. The main purpose of the training walls is to

(a) reduce the effects of wave activity

(b) reduce siltation due to longshore drift

(c) provide good fishing spots

(d) extend port facilities

7. Erosional coastal features shown in the diagram include

(a) a beach, sand dunes and a talus slope

(b) a sea arch, a sea stack and a rock platform

(c) a cave, a blowhole and cliffs

(d) an offshore bar, bays and a mudflat

290

Reading materials &: test ilems for Experiments 7, 8 &: 9

8. The approximate number of people living in the area shown in the diagram

would be:

(a) 50

(b) 500

(c) 5000

(d) 50000

9. The name of the caravan park is

(a) Beachside

(b) Oair

(c) Smithsville

( d) not stated

10. The sewage outlet

(a) is located towards the northern end of the beach

(b) is located towards the southern end of the beach

(c) is located in the middle of the beach

(d) disposes effluent in deep sea

11. Littoral drift is moving sand

(a) north-west

(b) north-east

(c) south-west

(d) south-east

291


12. The height of the sea stack is

(a) 16m

(b) 18m

(c) 25m

(d) not stated

13. The horticulture is located in the

(a) north-west quarter of the diagram

(b) north-east quarter of the diagram

(c) south-west quarter of the diagram

(d) south-east quarter of the diagram

14. The name of the nature reserve is

(a) Joe

(b) Jim

(c) Robyn

(d) Marilyn

15. The main land use on the reclaimed land is

(a) port facilities

(b) factories

(c) housing

(d) recreation

292

Reading materials cl test items for Experiments 7, 8 cl 9

16. Atmospheric pollution in the diagram is mainly the result of the

(a) lighthouse

(b) port facilities

(c) shipyards

(d) powerplant

17. The features on the beach made by people are

(a) a pier and a sewage outlet

(b) a pier, a groyne and a sewage outlet

(c) a pier, a groyne, a seawall and a sewage outlet

(d) a pier, a groyne, a seawall, a lighthouse and a sewage outlet

18. The area of the beach is

(a) 550 metres square

(b) 675 metres square

(c) 750 metres square

( d) 87 5 metres square

19. The buildings in the town are mainly shops and

(a) detached houses

(b) detached houses and home units

(c) terraces

(d) terraces and home units

293

Reading materials &: test items for Experiments 7, 8 &: 9

20. The coast guard station is

(a) on a headland

(b) the most seaward cultural feature on land

(c) located at the entrance to Port Gerald

(d) adjacent to the lighthouse

True/False:

294

On the Answer sheet provided write True or False in the space provided for each

statement indicating whether you believe the statement is true or false

21. The sea arch is seaward of the stack

22. The nature reserve is north of the golf course

23. The difference in height between the sea stack and the sea arch is 4 metres

24. The name of the high school is Port

25. The fishing vessel is heading back into port

26. The land use around the port is mainly industrial

27. The caravan park is closer to the beach than the town

28. Shipbuilding is the only secondary industry shown in the diagram

29. The person after whom the beach is named is the same as the seawall

30. The rock platform is between the low tide mark and the high tide mark

Coaslal Zone

- -- ' I I I I

,-· - ·-- ---- Shmcli11c 1trog1mh11io11 . ·- .. ----···---- ------\ ,~,_..,.; I I I

14- Inshore ion• ~ 4-Fcnlhoro...,,l:Bacb'ue ¥ Uunc sys1,·111

I - I ....

..... I .

I I

Power's SLSC

I I lnclpcnaro.mune ...

Cukmiling 1,la111s -l'-lti11ifoll & mcmun grasses

F'oretlunc

U1c beach 1ys1cm consis1s of lhc longsliorc bar, lhc beach & lhc fore.dune

I >uncs rcprc.~n& previous berms which have been Slabilil.cd a11d built Ul'IIHI bj addi1ional windblown sand

I I A-§

1· ~ ,

f :-a 0o A'O

!i

Mm

W 1 m

ltmsn'ldm

mt ia Em

mrn:,ns ta

al 9;

-i s -• - ;,t ~ =

. ' w

..

N

-

--

---t -

-..

-_

j_ -

--

--

l •

--.._l _ -

-

--


Key:

l Offshore zone 11 Backshore zone

2 Average high tide level 12 Dune system

3 Average low tide level 13 Incipent (<redone

4 Longshore bar 14 Power's SLSC

5 Longshore trough 15 Foredune

6 Inshore zone 16 Rick's Caravan Park

7 Low tide terrace 17 Bidou plants

8 Berm 18 Swale

9 Foreshore rone 19 Trail

10 The beach system consists 20 Colonizing plants -

of the longshore bar, the spinifex & merram

beach & the foredune grasses

w.-

297

21 Banksia & eucalyptus trees

22 Tea tree & grevillea shru~

23 Samoa Dune (30 metres high)

24 Shoreline progradation

25 George's Highway

26 Carolyn Swamp

27 Palm Beach

28 Kim's Sea

29 Cut & fill as a result of

destructive & constructive waves

30 Dunesrepresentprevious

berms which have been

stabilized and built upon by

additional windblown sand


Mnltjple choice items for Experiments 7, 8 and 9: Material 2

1. The feature shown in the backshore zone is the

(a) beach

(b) berm

(c) foredune

(d) sand dunes

2. The name of the sea is

(a) Rick's

(b) Samoa's

(c) George's

(d) Kim's

3. Human activities found in this area include recreation and

(a) sand mining

(b) transport

(c) houses

(d) manufacturing

298


4. The type of vegetation on the incipent foredune is



(c) grasses and trees

(d) not indicated

5. The natural feature landward of the beach is a

(a) low tide terrace

(b) sand dune

(c) swamp

(d) berm

6. The diagram shows the dune system to be an area of

(a) denundation

(b) progradation

(c) erosion

(d) weathering

7. A feature beside the swamp is a

(a) hind dune

(b) incipent foredune

(c) beach

(d) low tide terrace

299

Reading materials cl test items for Ezperiments 7, 8 cl 9

8. The name of the beach is

(a) Power

(b) Rick

(c) Fred

(d) Palm

9. The colonizing plants are


(b) bidou

(c) banksia and eucalyptus trees

(d) tea trees and grevillea shrubs

10. The SLSC is built

(a) on the beach

(b) on the benn

(c) on the incipent foredune

(d) on the foredune

11. The type of vegetation in the swale is

(a) spinif ex and merram grasses

(b) bidou



300


12. The height of the foredune is

(a) 15m

(b) 25m

(c) 30m

(d) not stated

13. Constructive and destructive waves cause

(a) weathering

(b) erosion

(c) aggradation

(d) cut and fill

14. The name of the road is

(a) Power's

(b) Palm's

(c) Fred's

(d) George's

15. A feature immediately adjacent to the beach is a

(a) longshore bar

(b) low tide terrace

(c) incipent foredune

(d) SLSC

301


16. The inshore zone consists of

(a) a longshore bar and longshore trough

(b) a longshore bar, longshore trough and a low tide terrace

(c) alongshore bar, longshore trough, a low tide terrace and a beach

(d) alongshore bar, longshore trough, a low tide terrace, a beach and

abenn

17. The areas sand moves between in the beach system are

(a) the foredune, the beach and the longshore bar

(b) the beach, the benn and the foredune

(c) the longshore bar, the beach and the dune system

(d) the beach, the incipent foredune and the offshore zone

18. The vegetation on the sand dune next to the road is


(b) bidou



19. The backshore mne is adjacent to

(a) the inshore mne

(b) the dune system

(c) the low tide terrace

(d) offshore zone

302

Readi.ng materials &: test items for Experiments 7, 8 &: 9

20. The average high tide level occurs on

(a) the beach

(b) the berm

(c) the low tide terrace

(d) the incipent foredune

True/False:

303



21. The foredune has a mostly vertical face facing the sea

22. The SLSC may be lost in a severe storm

23. The sand dunes were at one stage berms

24. The name of the swamp is Samoa

25. The beach has grasses on it

26. Industrial land use is shown on the diagram

27. The caravan park is beside the road

28. Vegetation increases in height towards the sea

29. The person after whom the highway is named is Carolyn

30. The trail is located on the seaward side of the foredune

Reading materials &: ~st items for Experiments 7, 8 &: 9

Material 3 combined m;esentation used in &periment 8:


60

50 Ht;9ht

;n mttrts 40

30

20

10

0 100 200 300 400 Distance in metres

'\Lake Carter

(29m wide)

500

304

e

Readbig materials cl test items for Experiments 7, 8 cl 9 305

Materia,1 3 split presentation used in Experiment 8:

60

50

40

30

20

10

0


16

6 c_-:,

,.~-c:::, 17 ,,,,......----22""- 0 25

15

1

100 200 300 400 500

Key:

1. LakeReed 18. Hang glider

2. Morgan's Beach 19. Dune protection programme 3. ReedSLSC 20. Old rubbish dump

4. Spinifex & marram grasses 21. Jet

5. Foredune (38m high) 22. Seagulls

6. Cumulus clouds 23. Burrow

7. Shrubs & woodland 24. Moon

8. Pampas grass 25. Shale

9. Gottom Bridge

10. Hind dunes (100m wide)

11. Lake Carter (29m wide)

12. Wide Highway

13. Wheat

14. Ridley Town

15. Hammond Cliff (41m high) Average gradient= 1:10.5

16. Destown Vertical scale: Height in metres

17. Cirrus clouds Horiz.ontal scale: Distance in kilometres

Readmg materials & test items for Experiments 7, 8 & 9 306

Please note: The multiple choice items for Material 3 used in Experiment 8 may

be found in Appendix 5

True/False:



21. The park is named Ridley

22. The hang glider is over the lake

23. The old rubbish dump is beneath a hind dune

24. The sand dunes have a protection programme

25. The highway is situated immediately beside a town

26. The hind dunes are wider than the lake

27. The hang glider is more landward than the jet

28. The cliff is made of shale

29. The moon is at an elevation below the height of the cliff

30. The burrow is on the lakeside of the foredune

Proportions correct data/or Experiment 7 307

Auueodi1 1~: Proportions correct data for students in Experiment 7

Experiment 7 trials with learning materials

Trial 1 Trial2 Trial 3

Student Combined Smil Qlmbin~ S;glil Combined Smit 1 .3 .233 .567 .367 .433 .467

2 .5 .5 .533 .433 .433 .4

3 .5 .433 .333 .367 .667 .533

4 .8 .467 .633 .333 .6 .433

5 .633 .367 .7 .567 .733 .667

6 .533 .4 .767 .3 .767 .433

7 .733 .467 .7 .533 .833 .5

8 .633 .467 .7 .567 .667 .6

9 .733 .367 .633 .5 .567 .233

10 .333 .4 .4 .233 .433 .367

11 .5 .5 .467 .467 .6 .6

12 .367 .4 .4 .4 .633 .4

13 .367 .6 .533 .467 .633 .533

14 .7 .4 .867 .433 .867 .633

15 .3 .233 .3 .433 .4 .5

16 .333 .267 .333 .467 .4 .467

17 .5 .333 .3 .367 .633 .4 18 .467 .467 .533 .467 .667 .667

19 .633 .533 .533 .5 .767 .567

20 .267 .267 .4 .367 .367 .333

21 .533 .5 .367 .4 .567 .5

22 .467 .5 .467 .567 .633 .667

23 .633 .633 .833 .667 .667 .7

24 .3 .367 .4 .433 .333 .4

25 .7 .633 .8 .567 .767 .533

26 .433 .4 .567 .267 .6 .3 27 .333 .4 .3 .4 .467 .2 28 .433 .367 .3 .367 .5 .367 29 .6 .5 .567 .6 .633 .633

Proportions correct do/a/or Experiment 7 308

Experiment 7 trials without learning materials

Tria14 Trial5 Trial 6

Student Combined S12lit CQmhined S12li1 Combined S;glit 1 .533 .533 .233 .3 .467 .3

2 .733 .467 .6 .467 .567 .533

3 .533 .367 .433 .433 .433 .467

4 .6 .433 .6 .433 .667 .433

5 .7 .6 .533 .533 .767 .6

6 .8 .4 .733 .433 .633 .467

7 .633 .5 .6 .6 .7 .633

8 .7 .5 .8 .467 .7 .367

9 .367 .4 .333 .4 .3 .4

10 .4 .367 .433 .467 .4 .3

11 .6 .433 .5 .567 .567 .533

12 .633 .5 .567 .267 .633 .367

13 .6 .567 .5 .3 .633 .533

14 .867 .567 .833 .567 .833 .667

15 .367 .4 .433 .367 .367 .333

16 .5 .267 .2 .4 .233 .3

17 .567 .467 .467 .5 .433 .633

18 .633 .567 .533 .567 .6 .633

19 .5 .667 .533 .6 .5 .6

20 .3 .433 .367 .333 .433 .467

21 .333 .3 .467 .5 .533 .533

22 .533 .6 .567 .533 .6 .6

23 .8 .733 .767 .467 .8 .6

24 .333 .433 .533 .467 .4 .433

25 .8 .633 .7 .633 .7 .667

26 .367 .233 .467 .367 .5 .267

27 .5 .4 .467 .3 .333 .2

28 .4 .267 .233 .2 .267 .3

29 .633 .6 .567 .567 .467 .567


Proportions COITCCt data for factual and inferential questions for each student in

Trials 1 to 3 in Experiment 7:


Combined Split Combined Split Combined Split

Stud~Dl Ew.t lofei: ~, lofei: Em:t lofei: Ew.t lofei: Ew.l lofei: Ea~l lofec 1 .333 .364 .111 .182 .667 .364 .333 .176 .444 .273 .333 .353

2 .111 .727 .111 .545 .111 .727 .667 .647 .444 .818 .333 .412

3 .556 .273 .111 .545 .444 .273 0 .235 .667 .455 .667 .588

4 .667 .909 0 .727 .556 .727 .333 .235 .667 .727 0 .412

5 .444 .636 0 .636 .667 .636 .333 .471 .778 .545 0 .647

6 .556 .364 0 ASS .556 .818 .333 .118 .444 .909 .333 .294

7 .556 .818 .111 .818 .556 .727 .333 .471 .556 .909 .333 .412

8 .556 .727 .111 .636 .667 .727 .333 .471 .778 .636 .667 .412

9 .667 .727 0 .545 .556 .727 .667 .412 .667 .636 .333 .294

10 .444 .273 .111 .545 .333 .273 0 .176 .444 .364 .333 .412

11 .444 .455 .111 .455 .222 .455 0 .294 .444 .636 .667 .412

12 0 .545 .111 .727 .333 .455 0 .294 .556 .636 .333 .471

13 .333 .364 .111 1 .556 .636 0 .412 .667 .727 .333 .412

14 .667 .636 .111 .636 .556 1 0 .765 .667 .909 .333 .588

15 0 .182 .111 .182 .333 .294 .222 .364 0 .294 .444 .364

16 0 .364 .222 .091 .333 .294 .333 .455 0 .353 .556 .455

17 0 .909 0 .455 .333 .294 .222 .273 .333 .588 .333 .818

18 .111 .545 .222 .727 0 .529 .333 .273 0 .765 .778 .636

19 .111 .818 .333 .636 0 .529 .444 .636 .667 .647 .444 .545

20 .333 .364 .222 .273 .333 .412 .444 .364 .667 .294 .111 .727

21 .111 .727 .333 .636 .667 .412 .333 .455 .333 .588 .556 .455

22 .222 .909 .667 .636 .667 .824 .778 .727 .333 .647 .889 .727

23 0 .545 .556 .455 0 .353 .444 .636 .667 .647 .444 .818

24 0 .455 .333 .273 .333 .294 .111 .727 .333 .294 .333 .455

25 .222 .909 .333 .727 .667 .765 .222 .727 .667 .765 .222 .545

26 .111 .545 .333 .364 .333 .588 .222 .182 .333 .588 .111 .455

27 0 1 .333 .455 .333 .412 .556 .273 .333 .647 .333 .818

28 .111 .364 .333 .273 .333 .294 .222 .364 .333 .412 .222 .091

29 0 .636 .222 .364 .333 .294 .222 .273 0 .647 .222 .273


Proportions correct data for factual and inferential questions for each student in

Trials 4 to 6 in Experiment 7:


Combined Split Combined Split Combined Split

Studeot Ea&l lofec Ea&l lo(« Ea,t lo(« Ea,1 lofec Ea&l lo(« Ea&t Infa:

1 .S56 .45S .111 .412 .222 .273 0 .176 .222 .364 0 .118

2 .444 .909 .111 .471 .444 .636 .667 .23S .333 .636 1 .3S3

3 .222 .45S .222 .471 .S56 .273 0 .412 .222 .364 0 .471

4 .667 .54S .111 .3S3 .S56 .818 .667 .3S3 .667 .727 .333 .471

s .667 .727 0 .S29 .444 .54S 0 .412 .667 .727 0 .S29

6 .667 .909 0 .3S3 .667 .818 .333 .294 .667 .S4S .333 .412

7 .444 .727 .111 .412 .111 .727 .667 .471 .444 .727 .667 .471

8 .667 .636 .111 .294 .667 .818 .667 .294 .667 .636 .667 .118

9 .444 .364 .111 .294 .111 .818 .333 .23S .111 .364 .667 .176

10 .111 .54S .111 .294 .S56 .182 .667 .3S3 .222 .45S 0 .294

11 .S56 .45S 0 .294 .333 .45S .333 .471 .444 .S4S .333 .471

12 .444 .727 .111 .471 .333 .636 .333 .118 .444 .818 .333 .23S

13 .S56 .727 .111 .S29 .444 .636 0 .176 .S56 .727 .333 .S29

14 .667 .909 .222 .412 .667 .909 .667 .412 .778 1 .333 .647

1S · .111 .23S .333 .364 .333 .412 .333 .273 0 .176 .222 .182

16 .333 .294 .333 .091 .333 .118 .222 .45S .333 .176 .222 .273

17 0 .471 .333 .S4S 0 .471 .444 .45S .333 .412 .S56 .54S

18 0 .706 .444 .S4S 0 .S29 .444 .54S 0 .S88 .333 .636

19 .222 .412 .778 .636 0 .S88 .S56 .636 .333 .471 .222 .727

20 0 .S29 .222 .364 0 .23S .444 .182 .667 .3S3 .333 .182

21 0 .412 .444 .273 0 .412 .333 .54S .333 .S88 .444 .S4S

22 .222 .824 .778 .727 .667 .76S .778 .727 0 .882 .667 .818

23 .111 .412 .222 .727 .667 .471 .222 .636 .667 .S29 .222 .727

24 .111 .23S .222 .S4S .333 .412 .444 .54S .667 .23S .333 .45S

2S .222 .76S .444 .S4S .333 .647 .333 .727 0 .706 .444 .818

26 .222 .3S3 .111 .364 .667 .412 .333 .45S .333 .471 .222 .45S

27 .111 .706 .444 .45S .333 .647 .333 .636 .667 .3S3 .333 .636

28 .111 .471 .333 .273 .333 .471 .222 .182 0 .23S .111 0

29 0 .S29 .222 .182 0 .176 .111 .091 0 .0S9 .222 .182

Proportions co"ect data/or Experiment 8 311


Student Fonnat Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial4 Trial 5 Trial6

gfmatmw. 1 Combined .367 .4 .6 .533 .6 .533

2 Combined .367 .633 .367 .4 .367 .533

3 Combined .667 .8 .767 .867 .733 .733

4 Combined .667 .567 .533 .567 .467 .533

5 Combined .7 .567 .6 .733 .533 .733

6 Combined .667 .8 .633 .667 .633 .6

7 Combined .267 .433 .7 .9 .567 .7

8 Combined .867 .767 .7 .867 .8 .733

9 Combined .333 .533 .533 .633 .467 .467

10 Combined .667 .733 .633 .567 .367 .4

11 Combined .6 .6 .467 .667 .433 .5

12 Combined .533 .433 .4 .5 .467 .4

13 Combined .467 .467 .467 .433 .267 .567

14 Combined .433 .533 .8 .8 .567 .633

15 Combined .533 .633 .7 .9 .6 .667

16 Combined .467 .333 .433 .667 .4 .433 17 Combined .767 .833 .7 .767 .633 .6

18 Combined .633 .667 .7 .767 .633 .4 19 Combined .433 .433 .533 .667 .7 .767 20 Combined .7 .8 .667 .7 .633 .8 21 Combined .6 .633 .567 .667 .7 .933 22 Combined .467 .467 .767 .667 .533 .467 23 Combined .733 .833 .633 .8 .7 .833 24 Combined .367 .733 .433 .567 .567 .433 25 Combined .633 .7 .667 .633 .733 .767 26 Combined .633 .733 .567 .533 .467 .567


Proportions correct data for students in Experiment 8 continued:

Student Format Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 4 Trial 5 Trial6

Qfatmill 27 Split .467 .533 .467 .7 .6 .633

28 Split .367 .4 .5 .433 .567 .5 29 Split .6 .567 .4 .533 .533 .6

30 Split .5 .433 .567 .667 .733 .867

31 Split .367 .367 .5 .4 .3 .433

32 Split .633 .733 .467 .633 .567 .733

33 Split .5 .433 .233 .333 .367 .533

34 Split .567 .7 .667 .6 .467 .567

35 Split .6 .5 .667 .867 .633 .733

36 Split .5 .433 .2 .533 .267 .5 37 Split .7 .633 .633 .733 .5 .533

38 Split .667 .7 .567 .567 .667 .7

39 Split .433 .5 .7 .733 .433 .5 40 Split .467 .367 .4 .5 .267 .467

41 Split .267 .333 .367 .2 .333 .3

42 Split .433 .6 .5 .533 .567 .433

43 Split .6 .567 .467 .4 .567 .667

44 Split .433 .533 .7 .7 .2 .167

45 Split .367 .5 .633 .667 .667 .833

46 Split .5 .533 .633 .7 .533 .5 47 Split .8 .733 .367 .6 .467 .4 48 Split .5 .567 .2 .633 .367 .633

49 Split .267 .433 .733 .8 .467 .5 50 Split .7 .733 .733 .633 .433 .567

51 Split .4 .333 .5 .467 .567 .3

52 Split .333 .733 .367 .467 .433 .4

Proportions correct dalafor Experiment 8 313

Proportions correct data for factual and inferential questions for each student

receiving a combined presentation format in Experiment 8:

Student Eactuill lDfererential

1 .5 .536

2 .458 .5

3 .458 .643

4 .25 .571

5 .458 .661

6 .208 .714

7 .5 .625

8 .375 .679

9 .375 .446

10 .333 .321

11 .417 .571

12 .625 .5

13 .583 .625

14 .417 .643

15 .375 .393

16 .375 .571

17 .292 .482

18 .5 .411

19 .458 .446

20 .542 .411

21 .167 .393

22 .333 .393

23 .458 .768

24 .417 .357

25 .333 .375

26 .375 .554

Proportions correct dalafor Experiment 8 314

Proportions correct data for factual and inferential questions for each student

receiving a split presentation fonnat in Experiment 8:

Studen1 Ea~wal lnfererenlial

27 .292 .339

28 .458 .5

29 .292 .143

30 .292 .357

31 .333 .196

32 .542 .464

33 .583 .393

34 .458 .339

35 .5 .643

36 .333 .464

37 .333 .464

38 .292 .339

39 .375 .304

40 .458 .554

41 .208 .232

42 .417 .339

43 .333 .393

44 .375 .357

45 .417 .554

46 .125 .304

47 .375 .589

48 .542 .536

49 .25 .429

50 .375 .339

51 .292 .375

52 .333 .571

Proportions correct data/or Experi,Mnl 9 315

Appepdix 16: Proportions correct data for students in Experiment

9

Group 1 Group2 Group 3 Group 4

(Material 1 (Material 1 (Material2 (Material2

Combined split) combined) split)

Student Score Swdcnt s,w:c Swdcnt s,w:c Swdcnt Score 1 .733 26 .5 51 .733 76 .533

2 .733 27 .567 52 .6 77 .333

3 .833 28 .567 53 .567 78 .4

4 .533 29 .467 54 .7 79 .. 5

5 .8 30 .467 55 .4 80 .5

6 .633 31 .767 56 .267 81 .4

7 .567 32 .433 57 .667 82 .467

8 .767 33 .467 58 .767 83 .6

9 .767 34 .467 59 .733 84 .467

10 .6 35 .6 60 .433 85 .4

11 .633 36 .6 61 .767 86 .467

12 .5 37 .667 62 .667 87 .567

13 .633 38 .667 63 .5 88 .567

14 .433 39 .367 64 .567 89 .3

15 .7 40 .567 65 .333 90 .7

16 .667 41 .6 66 .7 91 .533

17 .633 42 .5 67 .333 92 .37

18 .733 43 .467 68 .533 93 .467

19 .667 44 .6 69 .4 94 .467

20 .633 45 .533 70 .663 95 .4

21 .767 46 .367 71 .8 96 .6

22 .567 47 .433 72 .367 97 .367

23 .4 48 .633 73 .433 98 .4

24 .6332 49 .6 74 .633 99 .433

25 .6 50 .533 75 .567 100 .367


Proportions correct data on factual and inferential questions for materials presented

in the combined format in Experiment 9:

Smdcn1 Eactual IDferenJiw Smdent Ea~aI Inf~miw 1 .727 .333 26 .353 .667

2 .471 .333 27 .727 .556

3 .727 .556 28 .636 .333

4 .636 .333 29 .294 .333

5 .765 1 30 .353 .333

6 .588 0 31 .353 0

7 .545 .556 32 .176 1

8 .818 .667 33 .647 .667

9 .909 .444 34 .765 .333

10 .818 .667 35 .588 .667

11 .818 .556 36 .353 0

12 .455 .556 37 .727 .556

13 .545 .556 38 .909 .667

14 .588 0 39 .636 .556

15 .364 .667 40 .636 .556

16 .353 0 41 .647 0

17 .909 .667 42 .706 .667

18 .455 .222 43 .647 .333

19 .529 0 44 .294 .333

20 .235 0 45 .824 .333

21 .364 .444 46 .273 .333

22 .455 .889 47 .636 .444

23 .818 .444 48 .765 0

24 .529 .333 49 .545 .444

25 .471 0 50 .588 .667

Proportions com!ct data/or ExperuMnt 9 317

Proportions correct data on factual and inferential questions for materials presented

in the split format in Experiment 9:

Smdsmt factual Inf~ntial Stu~nt factual Inferential

51 .727 .444 76 .529 .333

52 .529 0 77 .636 .222

52 .545 .556 78 .364 .444

54 .455 .556 79 .636 .556

55 .647 .667 80 .636 .556

56 .588 .333 81 .471 0

57 .818 .556 82 .364 .444

58 .647 0 83 .273 .444

59 .412 0 84 .412 .333

60 .818 .444 85 .118 0

61 .471 0 86 .364 .667

62 .294 .333 87 .455 .222

63 .588 .333 88 .294 .667

64 .636 .444 89 .353 .333

65 .235 0 90 .545 .444

66 .412 .333 91 .412 .333

67 .176 0 92 .364 .556

68 .545 .667 93 .353 .333

69 .471 .667 94 .727 0

70 .176 .667 95 .412 .333

71 .471 .333 96 .455 .333

72 .545 .444 97 .727 .556

73 .273 .444 98 .455 .778

74 .647 .333 99 .364 .111

75 .545 .556 100 .471 0

The Influence of Technical Illustrations on Students - UNSWorks

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