Effects of 'Seductive Details' on Macroprocessing and Microprocessing in Adults and Children

How seductive details do their damage: A theory of cognitive interest in science learning.

“…A two-way ANOVA revealed that students who read passages with seductive details recalled significantly fewer important idea units {M = 1.95, SD -1.39) than those who read passages without seductive details (M = 4.78, SD = 1.97), F(l, 79) = 57.05, MSE = 2.85, p < .001. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that seductive details interfere with students* recall of important information and replicate past findings of the seductive details effect (e.g., Garner et al, 1989;Harp & Mayer, 1997).…”

“…The results of Experiment 2 replicated past findings of the seductive details effect on recall (e.g., Garner et al, 1989). As was found in Experiment 1, students who read passages containing seductive details recalled fewer structurally important ideas than those who read passages without seductive details.…”

“…This pattern of results, which can be called the seductive details effect, is consistent with earlier research findings in which adding seductive details (in the form of sentences) to a passage reduces or does not facilitate students' remembering of the main ideas in a passage (Gamer, Alexander, Gillingham, Kulikowich, & Brown, 1991;Garner et al, 1992;Garner et al, 1989;Harp & Mayer, 1997;Hidi & Baird, 1986;Wade, 1992;Wade & Adams, 1990). Also consistent with the seductive details hypothesis is that readers typically remember interesting adjuncts included in a passage rather than structurally important ideas (Gamer, 1992;Gamer et al, 1991;Gamer et al, 1992;Hidi & Anderson, 1992).…”

“…Textbooks are second only to lecture as the instructional medium of choice for presenting information to students (Garner, Gillingham, & White, 1989), but students often find the material boring (Harp & Mayer, 1997). One suggested technique for increasing students* interest in a text, such as the lightning formation passage in the Appendix, is to add seductive details, that is, highly interesting and entertaining information that is only tangentially related to the topic but is irrelevant to the author's intended theme (Garner, Brown, Sanders, & Menke, 1992;Gamer et al, 1989).…”

Cognitive constraints on multimedia learning: When presenting more material results in less understanding.

“…According to the emotional interest hypothesis, adding interesting material to an instructional presentation increases the learner's enjoyment of the presentation, and this increase in enjoyment causes the reader to pay more attention and work harder to understand the material. In short, emotion-grabbing adjuncts improve the learner's affect, which in turn improve the learner's cognitive processing (Garner et al, 1992(Garner et al, , 1989. In Experiment 3, if the emotional interest hypothesis is correct, then interspersing interesting video clips to a narrated animation about lightning formation should result in improvements in retention and transfer performance.…”