The Promotion of Learning from Complex Televisual Materials by the Use of Expectancies

Abstract

Previous research has indicated that learning from complex displays may be usefully seen as the outcome of an interaction between attentive processing and background knowledge. A 2 × 2 × 3 factoral experiment was designed to study this interaction. Attention was controlled by two expectancies related to the content of questions to be asked in a post‐test; learning was measured by two post‐tests related to each of the expectancies and the interaction was studied at three levels of professional training in the same subject area. The results suggested that expectancies may only significantly promote learning from a complex televisual display when background knowledge is at some critical level. The author concludes that the nature of expectancy promoted learning should be further explored as a means of providing for the more effective and economic use of video‐taped materials.