Samenvatting

The presentation of extraneous (i.e., irrelevant or unnecessary) information may
hamper learning with multimedia. The present study examined whether people can
learn to ignore unnecessary information with increasing experience with the task and
whether this depends on the layout of that information. In two experiments,
participants learned about the process of mitosis from a multimedia slideshow, with
each slide presenting a combination of expository text and a picture on one of the
stages in the process. Slides either contained no unnecessary text (control condition)
or unnecessary text (i.e., merely describing the picture) either integrated in the picture
(integrated condition) or presented underneath the picture (separated condition).
Knowledge about the studied mitosis phase was tested immediately after each slide
using a cloze test. Across Experiments 1 and 2, we did not find a reliable negative effect
of the unnecessary text on cloze test performance. As a result, the question of whether
task experience would reduce or eliminate that negative effect could not be answered.
The eye movement data did confirm, however, that participants attended less to the
unnecessary information with increasing task experience, suggesting that students
can adapt their study strategy and learn to ignore unnecessary information.