A Picture Really Is (Usually) Worth a Thousand Words

Whilemy recent exhaustive explorationof the experimental literature showed little evidence that teachingto any learning “style” matters, one thing that came through was the value ofpictures to learning and remembering, often said to be worth a thousand words. There’sconsiderable research about this in itself; here’s some information to helpguide your design efforts and support conversations with design-advice-offeringstakeholders.

Picture superiority effect

Thepicture superiority effect, based on experimentation going back into the 1960s,refers to the considerable evidence that images are more likely to beremembered than words. A number of studies I reviewedfor the learning styles research report showed this, even though it wasn’t whatresearchers were looking for. Time and again they found that, regardless of“style,” learners performed better from accessing pictures rather than words alone.For instance, Knoll et al. (2017) said: “Recall was higher for pictures thanfor words, even among participants who showed preference for verbalinformation” (p. 558). And Constantinidou and Baker (2002) reported the “visualpresentation of objects resulted in better learning, recall, and retrieval ofinformation than the auditory presentation alone” (p. 1). While researchers explicitlystudying the picture superiority effect differ on the reasons for it, most agree that pictures do seem to influence learning more than words—written orspoken—alone.

Mayer’s multimedia principle

Where those pursuing interest in the picture superiority effecttend to focus on an either/or choice of images or words, Richard Mayer foundthat the two together can create a more effective instructional approach. His multimediaprinciple states: “People learn better from words and pictures than wordsalone.” This also showed up in my learning styles research. Massa and Mayer(2006) found that visualizers and verbalizers do not benefit from being givendifferent kinds of instruction. For this content, all learners (i.e., bothvisualizers and verbalizers) benefited more from the addition of pictorialhelp, results consistent with what Mayer (2001) calls the multimedia effect:People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone (p. 344).

 

Make sure the images make sense

 

Decorativeart and other visual elements only add extraneous information for the learnerto sort through. Unrelated images make the learner pause and try to figure outwhat an image even means (I am recalling an eLearning program on “workplaceharassment” that included a cartoon image of a duck whacking a computer with amallet). An unlabeled image, particularly in instructional material, oftenmeans extra work for the viewer. Adding to cognitiveload can decrease learner interest and persistence—and learning—ifmaking sense of an image takes too much effort.

Onetest: Does the item make sense on its own?

A. Ladder safety, text only (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Laddersafety, text only

  B. Ladder safety, photo only (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Image-onlyinformation about ladder safety

The elements don’t make sense inisolation.

C. Ladder safety, photo + text (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Text + imagetogether make for a better instructional item

 

Exceptions?

Notethat Massa and Mayer—see above—specify that all learners benefited from theaddition of pictorial help for thatcontent. The strategy you choose depends on what you are trying to teach.You wouldn’t, for instance, offer anatomy instruction without illustrations. Similarly,the acquisition of strictly auditory skills may require no images. To wit: a professor at Temple University, in response tostudents’ failure to retain information about heart sounds, began advocatingfor medical students to access heart sound tutorials—via audio files deliveredon iPods (Carmichael,2007).

 

 

Caveats

All pictures are not created equal. Images need to be meaningful and related tothe content being taught. Not dancing cats. Not decorative, flying, zoomingwords. Not “infographics” that are just posters with pretty fonts on excitingbackgrounds. It’s important to note that researchers who found evidence of thepicture superiority effect in their experimentation about teaching to learningstyles were using carefully chosen, relevant images tightly aligned toinstructional intent.

 

Just for fun: What NOT todo?

See“thetop 10 worst infographics of all time” for examples of bad fonts,bad labels, and bad association of images to concepts.

 

Want more?

The Wikipedia entryfor “picture superiority effect” includes a long list of researchcitations from an array of fields, from cognitive development toneuropsychology to marketing, and would be a good place to start. More recentlythere is a good deal of interesting research around the usefulness of imageswith older people and those with cognitive or memory disorders such asAlzheimer’s disease.

 

Suggested:Richard Mayer’s Multimedia Learning, secondedition. The Harvard Initiative for Teaching and Learning has a niceoverview of Mayer’s work on multimedia instruction, supported withlecture videos and presentation slides.

References

Bozarth, Jane. TheTruth About Teaching to Learning Styles, and What to Do Instead. The eLearning Guild. 11 July 2018. 

Carmichael, Mary. “iPods Teach Docs to Recognize Heartbeats.” Newsweek. 24March 2007. 

Constantinidou, Fofi and Susan Baker. “Stimulus modality and verbal learning performance in normalaging.” Brain and Language, Vol. 82. 2002. 296–311.

Knoll, Abby R., Hajime Otani, Reid L. Skeel, and K. Roger VanHorn. “Learningstyle, judgements of learning, and learning of verbal and visual information.” BritishJournal of Psychology, Vol. 108, No. 3. August 2017. 544–563.

Massa, Laura J., and Richard E. Mayer. “Testing the ATIhypothesis: Should multimedia instruction accommodate verbalizer-visualizercognitive style?” Learning and Individual Differences, Vol. 16. 2006.321– 335.