Age Differences in Learning from Instructional Animations

Abstract

The present study tests the effects of the decline of executive functions and spatial abilities with aging on the comprehension of a complex instructional animation. An animation of a piano mechanism was presented individually to 33 young adults and 31 elderly participants. Two presentation speeds of the animation (normal and slow) were compared in a 2 × 2 experimental design. Eye movements were recorded during the learning time. Then, four executive function tests (inhibition, shifting, updating, and processing speed) and a spatial ability test (differential aptitude test) were undertaken by each participant. Results showed that the comprehension of animations was significantly affected by aging. Significant differences between young and old groups were found for executive functions and spatial abilities. Regressions on comprehension scores showed a strong significant effect of spatial ability. Like in previous research, presentation speed had no effect. Eye movement data showed this result was due to application of a compensation strategy.

A systematic review ofeye‐tracking‐basedresearch on animated multimedia learning

“…Four of the reviewed studies examined learners' visual attention to animations presented at different speeds. Three of them revealed that different animation speeds influenced learners' gaze behaviours (Boucheix et al, 2015;Schmidt-Weigand et al, 2010a, Experiment 2;…”

“…Like Alemdag and Cagiltay's (2018) study, individual differences were examined as a new theme, even though that is one of the multimedia principles. Prior knowledge (Köseo glu et al, 2013;Kragten et al, 2015;O'Keefe et al, 2014), spatial ability (Boucheix et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2015;Kühl et al, 2018), age (Boucheix et al, 2015;Pavlin et al, 2019), and educational background (Pavlin et al, 2019) are the four sub-factors that shape individual differences.…”

“…Two of the reviewed studies investigated the effect of spatial ability on eye tracking metrics (Boucheix et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2015).…”

“…Age differences influence learners' gaze behaviours in learning with instructional animations (Boucheix et al, 2015;Pavlin et al, 2019). Spatial ability diminishes as learners get older.…”

“…Older people, therefore, have difficulty in constructing knowledge from animations. For this reason, a significant difference related to eye-tracking metrics may occur between age groups (Boucheix et al, 2015). A significant effect on eye movement measurements existed between learners with different age groups and educational backgrounds (Pavlin et al, 2019).…”