Computers & Education 58 (2012) 172-180

Main point:

Experiment (n=81 with 3 conditions: text+pictures, text+real objects, text+pictures+real objects) showed no difference between text+pic and text+real objects (split attention was expected). But the last condition showed redundancy-effect.

Why couldn’t they detect the split-attention effect?

Although the physical distance between real objects and text in mobile device was much bigger than with text+pic both in mobile, the results did not differ significantly. Authors bring out a possible reason:

• Magnitude of the real objects’ positive effects exceeded the magnitude of split-attention’s negative effect. Also, studying with real objects could have increased their motivation and made the students more involved.

I thought two things here: 1) we don’t know if the split-attention effect was there or not. We can simply say that study result didn’t differ much.

2) Again I understand that the attitude towards learning may have important effects and would even outperform the problems arising from lousy study materials.

And to continue from here: can the study materials define the way of learning? (remember the active, constructive, interactive from Chi)