PICTURES WORTH WORDS What happens when we look at pictures, or at written words, or at pictures and words together? Is there a further effect when we hear words spoken along with visual or written material? We find evidence that visual material has strong
...ich have more auditory aspects, while damage to the right hemisphere resulted in problems understanding kanji, which are more nonphonetic and visual. (Benson 1981:82). One often observed effect suggests that pictures and words do not share a common processing system: Pictures are inevitably remembered better than words on tasks of recall and recognition (Park & Gabrieli 1995:1593). This "picture superiority effect" is an "established memory phenomenon," in that experiments have repeatedly shown that "memory for pictorial stimuli is extremely accurate, durable, and extensive compared to that for verbal stimuli" (Noldy, Stelmack, & Campbell, 1990:417). Pictures become even easier to remember when the objects are not just side-by-side but are shown interacting, e.g., a car crashing into a tree (Wollen & Lowry(1971:283). A theory to explain why pictures are memorable says that the processing of pictures in the brain needs "additional allocation of attentional resources or effort" (Noldy, Stelmack, & Campbell 1990:418). Noldy, Stelmack, & Campbell's (1990) EEG recordings of brain ERP (Event-Related Potential) waves showed that it took longer to name a picture than to read the verbal label of the picture. Park & Gabrieli's (1995:1589) participants also named pictures more slowly than they read words. Investigations of elementary learning processes, such as free-association reactions to words, drawings, and objects, have since the 1940s found a longer reaction time to pictures than to words (Otto 1962). Pictures are more complex than the words that label the pictures, so more time and attention is needed to identify, or "name," a picture. We spend more time looking at pictures (or real-life objects) before we can name them, so we remember pictures better. We spend less time looking at words in sentences, so we do not remember the sentences exactly-though we remember the gist. Pictures are also more distinctive and more unique than the words that label them, which further makes pictures more memorable. We learn from experience what things belong together in categories; we have learned the connections between different concepts. In picture and word experiments, this effect of being able to quickly spot the relationships between pieces of information is known as the priming or context effect, or the "expectancy mechanism" (Borowsky & Besner 1993:813). Words as well as pictures are read or understood faster when preceded by a related context. For instance, it is easier to identify the word "butter" when it comes after "bread" than when it comes after "doctor". Learning, by making connections between pieces of information and understanding their relationship, suggests that presenting pictures and words together to create connections between them will similarly be beneficial. A large body of research shows that learning can be affected positively when text and illustrations are presented together. For adults, say Di Vesta, Ingersoll, & Sunshine (1971:478), use of imagery is a strategy preference, while for children it is a skill. Teaching children to construct mental images as they read enhances their abilities to "construct inferences, make predictions, and remember what has been read," say Gambrell & Brooks Jawitz (1993:265). Their study (Gambrell & Brooks Jawitz 1993) showed that second and fifth graders who were told "Remember to make pictures in your head" outper...