Investigating the Effects of Modality and Multimedia on the Learning Performance of College Students With Dyslexia

There has been a lack of research on how people with individual differences learn with multimedia materials, in particular with regard to individuals with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disability characterized by subpar ability in reading, spelling, writing, word recognition, and phonological decoding. This population could potentially benefit from multimedia learning materials according to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning and Orton-Gillingham multisensory instructional approach. This study examined how learning in four multimedia conditions influences dyslexic college students' ability to recall and recognize information. Seventy-three college students with dyslexia were assigned to one of the four conditions that integrated the modality (spoken text vs. on-screen text) and multimedia (picture present vs. picture absent) principles. They completed a cued-recall and a content recognition test. The results indicated pictures facilitated recognition, which validated the multimedia principle. On-screen text led to a superior performance in recall and recognition compared to spoken text. This finding suggested the modality principle did not hold for participants with dyslexia in this study, which is especially surprising given that dyslexics have difficulty processing written text. Possible explanations of the findings are discussed.