This paper reviews research on pictorial stimulus complexity in instructional materials, examining still iconic visuals in particular. Five phases are proposed to assist in the integration of this research for generating useful hypotheses: (1) establishment of methodological and conceptual criteria; (2) collection of relevant literature; (3)…

Discusses previous pictorial research and its limited potential, and describes function-based research approach, which attempts to make findings relevant by identifying potential picture functions in terms of contributions to instructional processes and procedures broadly applicable to various objectives and strategies. Relevance of this approach…

A meta-analysis procedure was used to review research on pictorial effectiveness which focused on the use of static iconic visuals in instructional materials. The purpose of this exploratory study was to provide a means for forming future hypotheses based upon a quantitative aggregation of past research. The study was concerned with differential…