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Description

In the last two decades, an increasing number of researches have been conducted into multimedia learning. Multimedia is defined as presenting both words (such as spoken or printed text) and pictures (such as illustrations, photos, animation, or video) and multimedia learning occurs when people build mental representations from these words and pictures. Multimedia learning is often explained in terms of the role of working memory in the construction of knowledge representations in long-term memory. However, it hardly acknowledges that working memory is composed of multiple subcomponents and that these subcomponents are responsible for different cognitive tasks.

The present series of studies investigates which working memory components from Baddeley’s working memory model are involved in multimedia learning. This working memory model consists of three subsystems: the central executive (to focus, divide, and switch attention), the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the phonological loop (to hold and rehearse pictorial and verbal information, respectively). The relative importance of these components in multimedia learning is investigated using the dual-task methodology. This methodology allows selective interference to be measured by the concurrent performance of two tasks, which are a primary and a secondary task. In this research, the primary task is a multimedia learning task whereas the secondary task is performed in order to load one of the working memory subsystems. Additionally, a distinction is made between conceptual, causal and procedural learning tasks in order to investigate whether there are processing differences in working memory across task types. Therefore, the main question concerns the relative importance of the different working memory components for the processing of multimedia information during learning and retrieval in conceptual, causal and procedural tasks.

The aim of study 1 (pilot) was to test whether the developed experimental material is appropriate learning material. Nine tasks (three of each task type), containing fictitious information, are tested. Six out of these nine tasks are selected for study 2, in which working memory involvement during learning will be investigated. In study 3, working memory involvement during direct and delayed retrieval will be investigated.