Towards an Integrated View of Learning From Text and Visual Displays

Abstract

Visuo-spatial text adjuncts such as static or animated pictures, geographic maps, thematic maps, graphs, and knowledge maps that have been analyzed in the articles contained in this special issue provide complex pictorial infor-mation that complements the verbal information of texts. These spatial text adjuncts are considered as depictive representations that can support commu-nication, thinking, and learning. An essential precondition of this supportive function is that the visuo-spatial displays interact appropriately with human visual perception and the individual’s cognitive system, which is characterized by prior knowledge, cognitive abilities, and learning skills. Accordingly, effec-tive learning with visuo-spatial text adjuncts can be fostered by instructional design and by adequate processing strategies, both dependent on sufficient un-derstanding of how the human cognitive system interacts with these displays. Perspectives for further research in this area are provided. KEY WORDS: visual displays; spatial displays; adjunct displays; spatial cognition; represen-tations. Visual displays play an increasingly important role not only in our daily life, but also in the field of learning and instruction where instructional ma-terials today include more pictures, diagrams, and graphs than a few decades ago. From a historical perspective, the use of pictorial information in learning and instruction has a long tradition. In the seventeenth century, Comenius (influenced by John Locke’s sensualism) published his “Didacta Magna,”