Seductive details hamper learning even when they do not disrupt

Abstract

Previous research often revealed detrimental effects of seductive details on learning with multimedia instruction, but there are mixed findings regarding how to best explain these detrimental effects. We investigated whether the detrimental effects of seductive details are mainly mediated by the cognitive processes of diversion (deeper processing of seductive details rather than pertinent content) or disruption (unsuccessful attempts to integrate seductive details with pertinent content) by assessing the effects of instructional prompts. In an online learning experiment, participants (N = 247) learned either without seductive details (control condition) or with seductive details in one of three conditions: Participants received either a prompt informing them about the irrelevance of seductive details (irrelevance-prompt), a prompt to process seductive details and pertinent content separately (separation-prompt), or no prompt within their task instruction. We assessed recall and transfer of knowledge as dependent variables. Supporting the diversion hypothesis, participants in the no-prompt condition regarded seductive details as more relevant and consequently spent more time processing them compared to participants in the irrelevance-prompt condition, which negatively influenced their recall performance. Against the disruption hypothesis, participants in the no-prompt condition reported lower integration avoidance between seductive details and pertinent content compared to participants in the separation-prompt condition, but this led to better rather than worse transfer performance. Our results thus suggest diversion, and not disruption, to be the main process driving the seductive details effect. Reducing the details’ diverting potential seems a good way to deal with seductive details in instruction.

Previewing test items prior to learning and receiving decorative pictures during testing: Impact on listening comprehension for English as a Foreign Language students

“…Supporting the compensating effect of cueing hypothesis (H3), our findings reveal that presenting posttest questions beforehand deterred the negative effect of decorative pictures, which may suggest, not only distraction, but also diversion, to be the main process driving such effect. Receiving a prompt about seductive details' irrelevance and outperforming students who do not receive such prompt has been believed to confirm the diversion explanation (Eitel et al, 2019;Kienitz et al, 2023); previewing questions, in our view, is another way of receiving an implicit prompt about what could be relevant and what could be irrelevant in the learning phase, thus impacting retention and subsequent recall during testing. These findings are also consistent with previous successful attempts to mitigate the negative effects of seductive details on learning outcome performance (Eitel et al, 2019;McCrudden, 2019;Peshkam et al, 2011;Wang & Adesope, 2017).…”