Effects of Dynamic Visualizations Enriched With Visuospatial Cues on Learners' Cognitive Load and Learning Effectiveness

Abstract

The present study was to explore whether dynamic visualizations enriched with visuospatial cues can optimize learners' cognitive processing of mechanical systems. The animated conditions and cueing patterns were the independent variables with an attempt to investigate their impacts on retention and transfer tests. Either dynamic or static visualizations with the presence of visuospatial cues served as the instructional material. Two hundred thirty-eight English as a foreign language (EFL) learners participated in the experiment. The learners were distributed to six groups—either dynamic or static visualizations enriched with non-cue, entity-cues, and arrow-entity cues. Their prior knowledge was initially assessed, and then followed by retention and transfer tests and cognitive load measurements. The experimental results suggested that dynamic visualizations enriched with progressive visuospatial cues was more beneficial in helping learners to develop the favorable quality of mental models.