The Effect of Visual Cueing and Narration Speed on the Comprehension
Scores with Types of Task and Overall Cognitive LoadJewoong Moon
Chonnam National University, Republic of Korea
jewoong.moon@gmail.com

Jeeheon Ryu
Chonnam National University, Republic of Korea
jeeheon@jnu.ac.kr

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate how visual and auditory information affectcomprehension in different types of task and the overall cognitive load measures. Arrows on screen wasused as visual cueing, and narration was applied with different speed. In order to process narration it
requires more cognitive load than visual information does. Different narration speeds could have different
impacts on comprehension and cognitive load when it combines with visual cueing. Fifty-six college
students were recruited as paid participants. Independent variables were presence of visual cueing andnarration speeds, and 2x2 factorial design was applied. Dependent variables were comprehension scoresand cognitive load measures. Pre-test was measured as a covariate variable. The learning content was theblood circulation in human heart system. It was made of 1) the functions of human heart for conceptualtasks and 2) the circulation process of blood in heart for procedural tasks. In the conceptual task, there wasno significant difference in comprehension score. However, a significant difference by narration speed wasfound in the procedural task. The participants in normal speed of narration outperformed for those in fast
narration speed. No main effect of visual cueing and no significant interactions were found. Interestingly,
there is no effect by the presence of visual cueing. It can be explained that there was stronger modality
effects. For the overall cognitive load measures no significant result was found when pre-test of concept
and procedural tasks were controlled. Although there was no significant effect by the independent variables,some significant relationships between pre-test scores and the cognitive load measures were found. The
results revealed that the pre-test score of conceptual task had a significant relationship with the taskdifficulties. The pre-test score of procedural task had significant relations with the task difficulties andusability of cognitive load measures. The results indicated that types of task may have different impacts on
the cognitive load measures.
Keywords: narration speed, visual cueing, types of task, cognitive load

INTRODUCTION
Multimedia learning with faster narration could provide efficient learning process. Especially, fasternarration reduces learning time and draw learning efficiency by giving direct verbal information. But, it also hasconstraint that auditory information should hold information until it is processed. In the perspective of cognitive load
theory, auditory information increase more intrinsic cognitive load rather than visual one does. Because thisinformation had more element interactivity due to successive structures. The level of intrinsic cognitive load for aparticular task and knowledge level is assumed to be determined by the level of element interactivity (Sweller, 2010).
Narration speed
Narration is the dialog that can be used to deliver an instructional message (Ritzhaupt & Barron, 2008).
Narration, unlike its textual information, is inherently time-dependent. In fact, the use of narration can actually
increase the time required by a learner to complete a multimedia program. The goal of an instructional designer in alearning setting was to maximize a learner’s comprehension and satisfaction, while minimizing the amount of time
the learner will spend on a learning task. Because learners couldn’t deal with whole information entering the auditory
system, time-compressed narration caused cognitive learner and hinder learning outcomes
Visual cueing
Visual cueing is the addition of non-content information to visual representation such as arrows, circle,and coloring. It helps to find specific information on screen layout and reduce extraneous cognitive load which cause
split-attention effect. From the cognitive load perspective, a substantial number of studies have found that visualcueing is an effective method to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning (Lin, Atkinson, 2011). If overall
cognitive load is increasing due to faster narration, visual cueing give adequate visual aids for dropping cognitiveload.
Types of task
Conceptual and procedural tasks were applied in this study. Both of tasks had significant differences inlearning process. Conceptual task reflects concepts and their relationship. Concepts relate to a set of object, symbols
or events, which are composed of and can be decomposed into their defining characteristics. But, procedural task
replicates the temporal order and spatial relationships between actions that are intended to achieve a goal.

METHOD
Participants
Fifty-six college students were recruited as a paid participant. Participants were collected 56 university
students (33 female and 23 male) majoring in different fields from Chonnam National University (age M = 21.1
years, SD=2.32) and randomly assigned to a group receiving each conditions (n=14).
Materials
For topic for experiment we chose a circulation process of blood attached in Figure 1. It shows concepts ofeach part and whole process of blood circulation in human body. The original text has been divided into 6 modules
with 2000 words. Narration was recorded by adult female TTS (text-to-speech) program using AudacityTM, which issound editor. Narration speed was standardized by SPM (syllable per minutes). Fast narration was 462SPM, normal
one was 325SPM.

Figure 1. Visual cueing (left) and no cueing (right) conditions

ProceduresThis research was constructed 2(visual cueing vs. no visual cueing) x 2(fast speed vs. normal speed)factorial design, independent variables are composed of time-compressed narration and visual cueing on multimedia
learning environment. Each participant had own their computer including headphone. Participants had 45 min tocomplete the experiment. At first, participants were conducted pretest and showed video with the instruction. Whenlearning material is finished, they performed measurement for cognitive load and comprehension task.

RESULT
Comprehension score
A two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was planned to evaluate the effect if narration speed (fastervs. normal) and visual cueing (cued vs. un-cued) on participant’s comprehension score. The percentage correct scoreon the pretest for comprehension score was used as a covariate. There was significant difference on narration speed
in procedural task (F (1, 51) = 6.34, p=.001) described in Figure 1 below.
Overall Cognitive Load
A multiple two-way analysis of covariance (MANVOCA) was planned to evaluate the effect of narration
speed and visual cueing on overall cognitive load. There were no significant differences by the independent variables.
But pre-test score within types of task in cognitive load had significant results (conceptual task: task difficulty,self-evaluation, usability; procedural task: task difficulty, self-evaluation).

DISCUSSION
The result of this study revealed that types of task had different impacts on the comprehension scores andoverall cognitive load. Faster narration will give benefits to learners if they want to learn the content quickly. Thiscan be commonly happened when a learner tries to review the content again to reduce the learning time. However, asrevealed in this study, if the learning content is procedural it may not be useful for learners to use fast narrations. It isspeculated that the different treatment effect of narration speed between the types of task was driven by thecomplexity of learning process. Procedural task may require more cognitive demand for learning because a learnershould remember the elements of learning content as well as right sequence of them to make a correct process.
The interesting but unexpected result of this study was no significant difference by visual cueing. It wasexpected that visual cueing will facilitate learning even if in the procedural learning task. However, no significant
difference was found. Two answers are possible. First, there might be a strong modality effect in the learning. Whilethe learners are receiving the content in auditory format with various speeds, visual cueing had nothing to do for thelearning. Second, comprehension test format may have something to do with the results. If auditory information
already provided enough information to take a comprehension test, it won’t have any impact on the learning
outcomes.
This study focuses on overall cognitive load but for the separated cognitive load for the types of task. It
could be a limitation of this study to interpret the results. As reported in the result section, pre-test scores had
significant impacts on some of the cognitive load factors differently. For the conceptual task, pre-test score ofconceptual task had a significant impact on the perceived task difficulty. However, for the procedural task, pre-testscore had significant impacts on perceived task difficulty and usability factors of cognitive load. These results imply
that types of task possibly can have different degrees of cognitive loads

Literature Reference
Lin, L., Atkinson, R. K. (2011). Using animation and visual cueing to support learning of scientific concepts andprocesses. Computer & Education, 56, 650-658.
Ritzhaupt, A. D., & Barron, A. E. (2008). Effects of time-compressed narration and representational adjunct images
on cued-recall, content recognition, and learner satisfaction. Journal of Educational Computing Research,
39(2), 161-184.
Sweller, J. (2010). Element Interactivity and Intrinsic, Extraneous, and Germane Cognitive Load. Educational
Psychology Review, 22, 123-138.