Comprehension of illustrated text: Pictures help to build mental models

Picture-word differences in a sentence verification task

“…The format effect is also much greater with inferences than with verbatim statements. The finding of a pictorial advantage is consistent with both dualcoding theory (Paivio, 1971) and the literature in text processing (Glenberg & Langston, 1992;Larkin & Simon, 1987).…”

“…The picture advantage seemed to be due to the nature of the input and how information is extracted from it. The findings are discussed within the context of text-processing theories (Glenberg & Langston, 1992;Larkin & Simon, 1987).Although format effects have been identified in previous research (Goolkasian & Park, 1980;Kroll & Corrigan, 1981;Pellegrino, Rosinski, Chiesi, & Siegel, 1977; Potter & Falconer, 1975; Smith & Magee, 1980), the results have varied with the kind of task, and there is a lingering debate regarding the nature of the representations that are developed from picture and word versions of stimuli. Dual-coding theory (Paivio, 1971(Paivio, , 1975(Paivio, , 1978 proposed separate but interconnected verbal and symbolic systems in which pictures have some processing advantage because they generate representations in both memory systems, whereas words have only verbal representations.…”

“…The picture advantage seemed to be due to the nature of the input and how information is extracted from it. The findings are discussed within the context of text-processing theories (Glenberg & Langston, 1992;Larkin & Simon, 1987).…”

“…However, according to dual-coding theory (Paivio, 1971(Paivio, , 1978, pictures would have a more privileged access to the semantic network, so a format effect would be predicted particularly when the task requires reasoning. Similarly, a pictorial processing advantage would be predicted from the text-processing literature because pictures facilitate comprehension (Glenberg & Langston, 1992;Larkin & Simon,1987). Since the test sentence was always in a word form, there was a difference in compatibility between the picture and word inputs and the test sentence.…”

“…Glenberg and Langston (1992) developed a mental model to describe how pictures aid understanding and retention of textual material. Although the representations are propositional, when pictures are integrated into the text, representations of the material are richer and more elaborate than are representations of text presented alone.…”