Premium
Using Selective Redundancy to Eliminate the Seductive Details Effect
Author(s) -
Yue Carole L.,
Bjork Elizabeth Ligon
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3348
Subject(s) - narrative , redundancy (engineering) , psychology , key (lock) , cognitive psychology , multimedia , computer science , literature , art , operating system , computer security
The seductive details effect occurs when adding interesting, but extraneous, details to a lesson impairs learning of the lesson's key information. Although instructors could simply remove such interesting details, prior research suggests that interest can be a powerful motivating factor for learning. In the present research, we attempted to recruit the motivational benefits of seductive details without eliciting their detrimental effects by manipulating the redundancy between narrated and on‐screen verbal information within a multimedia lesson. We presented 69 college students with different instructional videos, one in which key facts were presented with on‐screen text slightly different from the narration, while seductive details were presented with on‐screen text that was identical to the narration. We eliminated the seductive details effect for these participants, indicating that partial redundancy can be used as a means by which interesting details can be included in a lesson without detracting from the learning of key facts.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.