Picture Health! A study Study on Function and Realism of Visuals in Medical Texts.
C.M.J. van Hooijdonk (Speaker)
E.H. van Gelder (Speaker)
Activity: Lecture / Presentation › Academic
Description
Research has shown that health communication materials are generally hard to comprehend for the general public. It has often been suggested that adding a visual to the text increases comprehension. However, research on the effectiveness of visuals in (medical) texts has resulted in inconclusive findings, possibly due to different types of images used in these studies. Therefore, we conducted an experiment in which we varied the function an image has in relation to the text (image function) and the degree of reality that is depicted (image realism). The effects of these two variables were tested on emotional and cognitive aspects of learning. The results showed that texts without visuals were perceived less attractive. However, adding visuals to the text did not reveal any evidence for enhanced learning in any way, neither was the type of image of influence.
Period
26 Aug 2010
Event title
Bi-annual conference of the EARLI SIG Text and Graphics Comprehension