Why do illustrations promote comprehension of manuals? Effects of motivation and elaboration

Abstract

The present article proposes a cognitive model, called the "two-level model," which uses 2 variables (increasing motivation and deepening elaboration) to explain the utility of illustrations for promoting the comprehension of text. An existing evacuation manual was used in 2 experiments to test the variables posited by the model. In Experiment 1, participants (adults 18 to 24 years old; 28 men, 6 women) were asked to answer 2 questions relating to their motivation immediately after they glanced for 2s at a page in the manual. The results revealed that the illustrations significantly increased the participants' motivation to comprehend the manual. In Experiment 2, participants (adults 18 to 26 years old; 12 men, 11 women) were asked to take 10 minutes to comprehend the manual. This experiment confirmed that participants gazed at the illustrations and recognized them, and showed that the better that the participants recognized the illustrations, the more of the text associated with the illustrations they recalled, possibly due to deeper elaboration with the illustrations.