Organized Spatial Displays and Texts

Abstract

In 2 experiments, students were shown a visual display and then a related text passage, or vice versa. The Kulhavy model of text learning with organized spatial displays led the authors to predict that the students who viewed a visual display before reading related text would recall significantly more information from the stimulus materials than would the students who read the text first. The prediction was supported in both experiments; 2 populations (college students and middle-school students) participated, and 2 types of visual displays (geographical maps and scientific diagrams) were used. In the 2nd experiment, the authors predicted that a scientific diagram altered to have map-like properties would result in better acquisition of knowledge than an unaltered scientific diagram would. The groups that studied the map-like diagram earned higher scores on various measures of knowledge acquisition, but the difference was not statistically significant. Several explanations for this result are offered, as are suggestions for research on the use of visual displays to enhance learning.