This study explored the causes of the reverse modality effect when learning from multimedia instruction. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups (visual text or spoken text). The findings revealed a reverse modality effect wherein that those studying visual text outperformed those studying spoken text on three assessments. Further…

The focus of this special issue is on the cognitive load underlying processes of interactive knowledge construction in a wide range of instructional multimedia platforms. Multimedia comprehension involves the parallel processing of auditory-verbal and visual-pictorial channels within working memory. By means of integrating multimodal information,…

Cognitive processing limitations restrict the number of complex information items held and processed in human working memory. To overcome such limitations, a verbal working memory channel is used to construct an if-then proposition representation of facts and a visual working memory channel is used to construct a visual imagery of geometric…