Speaker/Gender Effect: Impact of the Speaker's Gender on Learning with Narrated Animations

Speaker/Gender Effect: Impact of the Speaker’s Gender on Learning with Narrated Animations Stephanie B. Linek (s.linek@iwm-kmrc.de) Hypermedia Research Unit, Knowledge Media Research Center, Konrad-Adenauer-Str. 40, 72072 Tuebingen, Germany Peter Gerjets (p.gerjets@iwm-kmrc.de) Hypermedia Research Unit, Knowledge Media Research Center, Konrad-Adenauer-Str. 40, 72072 Tuebingen, Germany Katharina Scheiter (k.scheiter@iwm-kmrc.de) Department of Applied Cognitive Psychology and Media Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Konrad-Adenauer-Str. 40, 72072 Tuebingen, Germany According to the limited capacity assumption, these two separate channels are both limited with respect to the amount of information that can be processed at a time. The active processing assumption emphasizes that learners need to engage in sense-making activities and deeper cognitive processing of the instructional materials to achieve mean- ingful learning outcomes. Active processing includes the selection of relevant information, the organization of the selected information into coherent meaningful representa- tions as well as the integration of the verbal and pictorial representations with each other and with prior knowledge (Mayer, 2001). These assumptions have allowed deriving several design guidelines for multimedia learning, thereby inspiring nu- merous empirical investigations. But until now the focus of this research has mainly been on the question of how to combine pictorial and verbal information (e.g., temporal and spatial contiguity principle). However, comparably less work has been done to find out how each of the single rep- resentational formats should be best designed. While there are hardly any design recommendations for pictorial repre- sentations (e.g. Tversky, Morrison, & Betrancourt, 2002), some first insights exist with regard to how to present verbal information as part of multimedia messages. In the follow- ing section multimedia principles for the design of verbal information will be discussed. Abstract Current cognitive multimedia design theories provide several guidelines for how to integrate verbal and pictorial informa- tion. Based on a dual-channel information processing model, many authors have suggested using spoken rather than written text along with pictorial representations (e.g., animations). However, the directives for the design of auditory text (narra- tion) are still fragmentary, especially with regard to the kind of voice to be used. In the current paper a very fundamental question regarding the implemented voice was addressed, namely, whether to use a male or a female voice for the pres- entation of verbal information in multimedia learning envi- ronments. In the experiment reported learners studied anima- tions that aimed at teaching students how to solve probability problems. The expository text was presented as narration. The learner’s gender and the speaker’s gender were varied be- tween subjects. The results show that learners achieved better learning outcomes when the narration was presented by a fe- male speaker rather than a male speaker. This finding oc- curred irrespectively of the learner’s gender (speaker/gender effect). The results suggest augmenting purely cognitive ap- proaches to multimedia design by social-motivational as- sumptions. Cognitive Science and Multimedia Design In the last ten years, multimedia learning environments have become ubiquitous means for conveying knowledge in the Social as well as in the Natural Sciences. Unfortunately in many cases the design of these environments is still driven by intuition and technological capabilities of the designers, rather than by empirically validated guidelines. However, recently theories of multimedia design based on Cognitive Science have been developed like Richard Mayer’s (2001) cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML), from which guidelines regarding the design of verbal and picto- rial representations in multimedia messages can be derived. The CTML states that incoming information consists of either verbal or pictorial representations, which are proc- essed in a visual or a verbal channel depending on the mo- dality of the representation (i.e., dual-channel assumption). Designing Verbal Explanations According to the modality principle, dynamic visualizations that need verbal explanations are best presented as anima- tions with auditory text (narrated animations) instead of written text (Moreno & Mayer, 1999). Theoretically, this principle has been ascribed to the dual-channel and limited capacity assumption. If written text is used to present expla- nations, the visual channel’s limited capacity may be easily overloaded due to the fact that the verbal and pictorial in- formation need to be processed within the same channel in parallel. On the other hand, presenting text as narration al- lows the distribution of processing requirements across both