How Brief Initial Inspection of a Picture May Foster Comprehension of Text (original) (raw)

In the present study we hypothesized that the gist representation of a picture (extracted from brief initial inspection) supports inference generation from subsequent text, which in turn should foster comprehension. Moreover, we proposed that longer inspection of a picture is necessary to provide learners with an alternative representation that fosters mental animation and recall. Participants (N= 76) learned from a text about pulley systems, and in three out of four conditions from an additional picture of a pulley system. Students ...