Metacomprehension judgements reflect the belief that diagrams improve learning from text

Abstract

In two experiments we systematically explored whether people consider the format of text materials when judging their text learning, and whether doing so might inappropriately bias their judgements. Participants studied either text with diagrams (multimedia) or text alone and made both per-paragraph judgements and global judgements of their text learning. In Experiment 1 they judged their learning to be better for text with diagrams than for text alone. In that study, however, test performance was greater for multimedia, so the judgements may reflect either a belief in the power of multimedia or on-line processing. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and also included a third group that read texts with pictures that did not improve text performance. Judgements made by this group were just as high as those made by participants who received the effective multimedia format. These results confirm the hypothesis that people's metacomprehension judgements can be influenced by their beliefs about text format. Over-reliance on this multimedia heuristic, however, might reduce judgement accuracy in situations where it is invalid.

Who Benefits from Diagrams and Illustrations in Math Problems? Ability and Attitudes Matter

“…Furthermore, students often believe that they learn more from multimedia materials than from text alone, regardless of whether or not this is the case (Serra & Dunlosky, 2010). In parallel to our findings, Serra and Dunlosky (2010) found that students accurately predicted that diagrams would improve their text comprehension; however, they inaccurately predicted that irrelevant illustrations would also improve their text comprehension. These authors attributed students' predictions to a general, undifferentiated belief about multimedia learning, namely, that visuals always help.…”

“…Students often have misconceptions about their own learning (Bjork, Dunlosky, & Kornell, 2013). Furthermore, students often believe that they learn more from multimedia materials than from text alone, regardless of whether or not this is the case (Serra & Dunlosky, 2010). In parallel to our findings, Serra and Dunlosky (2010) found that students accurately predicted that diagrams would improve their text comprehension; however, they inaccurately predicted that irrelevant illustrations would also improve their text comprehension.…”

Neuroscientific information bias in metacomprehension: The effect of brain images on metacomprehension judgment of neuroscience research

“…However, given the belief that a multimedia presentation of material is more comprehensible than a textonly presentation (Serra & Dunlosky, 2010), it is possible that the multimedia format could explain the higher metacomprehension judgment under the brain image condition. Therefore, in Experiment 2, we investigated whether a difference in the format of a diagram (i.e., brain image vs. bar graph) affects metacomprehension judgment.…”

“…In particular, belief about multimedia presentations-that is, the belief that illustrated text is understood better than nonillustrated text-affects metacomprehension judgment. Serra and Dunlosky (2010) demonstrated that readers who read text accompanied by conceptual diagrams or photographs judged their level of comprehension as higher than did those who read text only, reflecting a multimedia belief among the participants. However, performance on the comprehension test was higher for text accompanied by conceptual diagrams than for text only and text accompanied by photographs.…”

The effects of interleaving versus blocking on foreign language pronunciation learning

“…Seeing and hearing the pronunciation rules in blocked fashion may have rendered them easier to notice than seeing and hearing them in interleaved fashion. In previous studies, participants have reported that they learned material better when it was presented in a fashion that was designed to increase its ease or fluency of encoding, such as increasing the font size of text (e.g., Rhodes & Castel, 2008), increasing the coherency of text (e.g., Rawson & Dunlosky, 2002), or providing pictures with text (e.g., Carpenter & Olson, 2012;Serra & Dunlosky, 2010).…”