Mason, L., Pluchino, P., Tornatora, M. C., & Ariasi, N. (2013). An eye-tracking study of learning from science text with concrete and abstract illustrations. The Journal of Experimental Education, 81(3), 356-384.

Mason, L.; Pluchino, P.; Tornatora, M.; Ariasi, N.

2013

Mason, L., Pluchino, P., Tornatora, M. C., & Ariasi, N. (2013). An eye-tracking study of learning from science text with concrete and abstract illustrations. The Journal of Experimental Education, 81(3), 356-384.

This study investigated the online process of reading and the offline learning from an illustrated science text. The authors examined the effects of using a concrete or abstract picture to illustrate a text and adopted eye-tracking methodology to trace text and picture processing. They randomly assigned 59 eleventh-grade students to 3 reading conditions: (a) text only; (b) text with a concrete illustration; and (c) text with an abstract illustration in a pretest, immediate, and delayed posttest design. Results showed that the text illustrated by either the concrete or the abstract picture led to better learning than did the text alone. Eye-fixation data revealed that the abstract illustration promoted more efficient processing of the text. Analyses of the gaze shifts between the 2 types of external representation indicated that the readers of the text with the abstract illustration made a greater effort to integrate verbal and pictorial information. Furthermore, relations between online and offline measures emerged.

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