The Attributes Of Cue Labels Affect The Multimedia Learning Effect:Evidence From Eye Movements

The development of information technology makes it very convenient for multimedia to present teaching content in a combination of graphic,video,animation and other representation forms.However,the application of technology does not mean the innovation of teaching methods and the improvement of teaching effects.Previous studies have pointed out that improper information organization in multimedia instructional design may lead to low learning efficiency.It is a more concerned issue in this field to explore how to use cues to guide learners to organize and integrate multimedia content more effectively.Cues refer to non-content information that educators add to multimedia learning materials,mainly in the form of colors,arrows,and highlights.Previous studies have found that cues can guide individuals to choose the focus of learning,thereby promoting the organization and integration of knowledge,that is,the cueing effect.Cue labels refer to words or phrases extracted from text materials,which are marked in the picture part corresponding to the text content,and can repeatedly provide explanatory information of the text.Studies have shown that the addition of labels helps learners recall more procedural text content,but this effect is not stable;some studies have found that cues only guide learners’ attention on the surface of the learning content and do not promote learning.Deep processing of content.As an effective instructional design method,cues have also been found in some studies to not reduce the external cognitive load of learners.Then,will combining different cue attributes on the label(such as label font size and color)reduce the external cognitive load of learners,resulting in a learning effect of 1+1>2?Therefore,studying the influence of cue label attributes on multimedia learning effect has certain significance for clarifying the theoretical explanation of cueing effect,exploring the possibility of more effective cue combinations on labels,and improving the effectiveness of multimedia teaching in practice.This study combined eye tracking technology to explore the influence of cue label attributes on multimedia learning,and to test whether cues can reduce external cognitive load from the perspective of cognitive load.In experiment 1,two-factor experimental design was adopted among the subjects,which compared the impact of the two cue attributes of the label’s font size and the label’s color on the learning effect.The purpose is to explore whether the combination of the larger font of the label and the existing color can make the learner have better results,it was found that the learner performed better on the retention test under the large label condition,and the learner made more eye movements into the cue area;Experiment 2 also used a two-factor experimental design,which combines the font size of the label with the color coding of the label(the color of the label is the same as the corresponding text content),and the purpose is to explore changing the "color" clue to after "color coding",whether the cue function of color coding can be tested to promote learners’ understanding of the text and improve learners’ performance.The results showed that learners performed better on the retention test under the large label condition,and had better transfer performance under the color-coded condition.Did not reduce the learner’s extrinsic cognitive load.Under the conditions of this research,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)Label cues play the role of attention guidance and organizational integration.The learner’s fixation time to the cue area is longer,the number of fixation times and the number of fixation points are more.It shows that when there are prominent label cues in the learning materials,it can effectively guide the learners’ attention and promote their processing of the learning materials.(2)Cues facilitate learners’ memorization and understanding of the content.The retention score is better in the large label condition,and the transfer score is better in the color-coded condition.It shows that when the highlighted label is associated with the corresponding text content,it is more conducive to the learners to process the important content of the learning materials and establish a coherent and unified psychological representation,thereby deepening the understanding of the learning materials and improving the transfer performance of the learners.has been improved.