The Effect of Diagrams on Online Reading Processes and Memory

This work examined how adjunct displays influence college readers' moment-by-moment processing of text and the products of reading, using reading time (Experiments 1 2), and think-aloud methodologies (Experiment 3). Participants did or did not study a diagram before reading a text. Overall, the reading time data, think-aloud data, and recall data were consistent with the no-increased-effort hypothesis, which states that a diagram can facilitate comprehension, although readers may not engage in more effortful online processing. These data suggest that studying a diagram before reading can improve memory for an expository text without necessarily increasing online effort.