Hegarty, M., Kriz, S., & Cate, C. (2003). The roles of mental animations and external animations in understanding mechanical systems. Cognition & Instruction, 21(4), 325-360.

Hegarty, M.; Kriz, S.; Cate, C.

2003

Hegarty, M., Kriz, S., & Cate, C. (2003). The roles of mental animations and external animations in understanding mechanical systems. Cognition & Instruction, 21(4), 325-360.

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The effects of computer animations and mental animation on people's mental models of a mechanical system are examined, in 3 experiments, students learned how a mechanical system works from various instructional treatments including viewing a static diagram of the machine, predicting motion from static diagrams. viewing computer animations, and viewing static and animated diagrams accompanied by verbal commentaries. Although students' understanding of the system was improved by viewing both static and animated diagrams, there was no evidence that animated diagrams led to superior understanding of dynamic processes compared to static diagrams. Comprehension of diagrams was enhanced by asking students questions that required them to predict the behavior of the machine from static diagrams and by providing them with a verbal description of the dynamic processes. This article proposes that predicting motion from static diagrams engages students' mental animation processes, including spatial visualization, and provides them with information about what they do and do not understand about how the machine works. Verbal instruction provides information that is not easily communicated in graphics and directs students' attention to the relevant information in static and animated diagrams. The research suggests that an understanding of students' mental animation abilities is an important component of a theory of learning from external animations.

Experiment 2 shows no significant difference in comprehension between students who study a static diagram accompanied by text and those who study an animated diagram accompanied by a commentary that is informationally equivalent to the text. This suggests that students who received the static media were able to construct a dynamic mental model of the system on the basis of the verbal description of motion in the text and that viewing an external animation is not essential to students’ learning. In experiment 2, students who were asked to predict system behavior before receiving instruction had better performance on the outcome measures than those who did not predict this behavior.

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