Chapter 8: Modality Principle

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Chapter 8: Modality Principle
Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Keywords: Mayer, transfer, retention, modality, contiguity
Useful quotes

• Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text; that is students learn better when words in a multimedia message are presented as spoken text rather than printed text. P134
• When pictures and words are both presented visually, the visual/pictorial channel can become overloaded but the auditory/verbal channel is unused. P134
• …relevant principles: the multimedia principle- using words and pictures rather than words alone; the spatial contiguity principle- placing printed words near corresponding pictures; the temporal contiguity principle –presenting words and corresponding pictures at the same time; and the coherence principle –avoiding unneeded adjuncts. P134
• you could incorporate the words as screen text and present them at the bottom of the screen. P 135
• captioned animation.- is a narrated animation. (Cf. P136).
• (indormation delivery theory) … the idea that multimedia learning is improved by presenting information to learners via as many routes as possible. P137
• The premise underlying the information-delivery theory is that learners need to receive verbal and visual information; obviously pictures are presented visually, but the modality of the words does not matter because they have the same informational value when expressed as speech as when expressed as printed text. P137
• A more extreme version of the information-delivery theory predicts that on-screen text will result in better learning than narration because on-screen text can be reread whereas spoken text is fleeting. P137
• (in the information-delivery) (…) learning occurs when information is presented by the instructor and received by the student. P138
• The case for the idea that modality matters is based on the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, and (…) its dual-channel assumption: people have two separate information-processing channels –one for visual/pictorial processing and one for auditory/verbal processing. P139
• … the load is balanced between two channels, so neither one is excessively overloaded. P139
• Each channel has limited capacity, so each can process only a limited amount of material all one time, meaning that one channel is overloaded with processing both words and pictures while the other channel is relatively underused. P140
• Mousavi et al. used the term modality effect in a broad sense to include situations in which presenting simultaneous visual and auditory material is superior to presenting the same material successively, a result that I call the contiguity effect. P 140
• Moreno and Mayer use the term modality effect in a more restricted sense to refer only to situations in which presenting pictures and spoken text is more effective than presenting pictures and printed text. P140
• Overall, the modality effect is consistent with the cognitive theory of multimedia learning and inconsistent with the information-delivery theory. Indeed, the results provide overwhelming evidence that modality matters. P144.