Reducing Transience during Animation: A Cognitive Load Perspective

Animation has an inherent advantage over static graphics when presenting dynamic content because it provides a more accurate and realistic depiction. Simultaneously, animation has an inherent disadvantage because most animated information is perceptually transient. In this quasi-experimental study,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEducational psychology (Dorchester-on-Thames) Vol. 33; no. 7; pp. 755 - 772
Main Authors Ng, Hong Kok, Kalyuga, Slava, Sweller, John
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 2013
Subjects
Animation
Cognitive Processes
College Freshmen
College Instruction
College Students
Comparative Analysis
Difficulty Level
Engineering Education
Foreign Countries
Instructional Effectiveness
Pretests Posttests
Quasiexperimental Design
Singapore
Statistical Analysis
Technical Education
Two Year College Students
Visual Aids
Singapore
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Summary:Animation has an inherent advantage over static graphics when presenting dynamic content because it provides a more accurate and realistic depiction. Simultaneously, animation has an inherent disadvantage because most animated information is perceptually transient. In this quasi-experimental study, cognitive load theory was used to investigate the extent to which animation's transience could be ameliorated with the incorporation of a pause/play feature or a tracing feature that lets previous information remain visually available on screen instead of disappearing after a brief display. Continuous animation, animation with pause/play and their equivalent static graphics, each designed with either a trace or no trace, were used to instruct 228 post-secondary technical education students on how an electrical circuit works. All formats were accompanied with the same on-screen text. The pattern of results, especially the interactions, indicated that animation with a pause/play format obtained the highest efficiency in the no tracing condition, while the continuous animation format obtained the highest efficiency in the tracing condition. These results suggest that by restructuring the dynamic information, the negative instructional consequences of the transient nature of animation can be counteracted to make it more efficient for learning than static graphics.
ISSN:0144-3410