Images and Text on PowerPoint Slides: “Tracking” Their Impact on Information Retention

Abstract

In this study, the authors examined the impact of irrelevant visual images in a PowerPoint lecture on attention and information retention performance. They found students viewing text-only PowerPoint slides retained less information than students viewing text-and-image slides, but the difference did not reach significance. However, when examining both fixation counts and fixation duration, they found students viewing text-and-image PowerPoint slides who spent more time looking at the text retained more information. They discuss the impact of varied visual attention (moving back and forth from text to image) on information integration and retention and establish empirical questions for future research.