Secondary-Task Effects on Learning With Multimedia: An Investigation Through Eye-Movement Analysis

ABSTRACT

This study investigates secondary-task interference on eye movements through learning with multimedia. We focus on the relationship between the influence of the secondary task on the eye movements of learners, and the learning outcomes as measured by retention, matching, and transfer. Half of the participants performed a spatial tapping task while studying the instructional materials, whereas the other half studied the materials, without spatial tapping. The results revealed suboptimal learning outcomes under the secondary task, which was accompanied by fewer transitions of gaze between the text and the figure. We propose that the suboptimal learning outcomes might be due to the disrupted processing of pictures, and possibly due to the less efficient integration, of the information gathered from the text and figures.

KEYWORDS:

• Adult learning
• eye tracking
• multimedia-learning environments
• multiple representations
• secondary task

Acknowledgments

We thank Tugce Nur Bozkurt for data analysis. We also thank Kursat Cagiltay and our reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Funding

The research reported in this paper has been supported by Marie Curie Actions IRIS (ref. 610986, FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IAPP) and by METU Scientific Research Project scheme BAP–08-11-2012-121, “Investigation of Cognitive Processes in Multimodal Communication.”

Notes

1. The term multimedia learning is indeed a misnomer, as acknowledged by Mayer (2009). A more appropriate term would be multimodal learning. However, following the conventional use, in the present study we prefer using the terms learning with multimedia and multimedia learning to refer to learning from text and static pictures. The term multiple representations is also used to refer to learning from text and pictures (e.g., Ainsworth, 1999; Bodemer & Faust, 2006).

2. The CTML model and Baddeley's (1986) WM model are not fully congruent: Mayer (2009) proposes modality-specific (i.e., spoken vs. visual) components, whereas Baddeley proposes information code-specific subsystems (verbal vs. pictorial). This difference has implications in the so-called modality effect, which is beyond the scope of the present study (see Schmidt-Weigand et al., 2010, for a discussion of this issue).

3. Thanks to our reviewer for attracting our attention to this possibility.