Procedural Multimedia Presentations: The Effects of Working Memory and Task Complexity on Instruction Time and Assembly Accuracy

IRRAZABAL, N., SAUX, G. & BURIN, D.

Applied cognitive psychology

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Lugar: Leicester; Año: 2016 vol. 30 p. 1052 - 1060

0888-4080

Proceduraltext conveys information of a series of steps to be performed. This studyexamined the role of verbal and visuo-spatial WM in comprehension and executionof assembly instructions, as a function of format (text, images, multimedia) andtask complexity (three or five steps). One hundred and eight participants read andexecuted 27 instructions to assemble a LEGOTM object, in single and dual taskconditions. Study times and errors during assembly were measured. Participantsprocessed faster pictorial and multimedia instructions than text instructions,and made fewer errors in the execution of multimedia instructions. Dual taskaffected more text or picture-only, than multimedia presentation. A verbalsecondary task caused more errors in text or picture-only presentations, andspatial secondary task also caused interference in text-only instructions.Overall, these results support the multimedia advantage, and the role of bothverbal and visuo-spatial WM, when understanding instructions.