Abstract

Combinations of text and different types of pictures are commonplace in biology as in science in general. The single representations (i.e., text, picture) constituting a text–picture combination may contain redundant or complementary information. The ability to identify and integrate information in different kinds of text–picture combinations is indispensable for engaging in science and is normatively expected to be acquired in school. In this experimental study, which was not preregistered in an independent institutional registry, N = 240 undergraduate students worked on 2 constructed-response biology tasks originating from authentic final exams to obtain the higher education entrance qualification. The material carried equivalent information between conditions but consisted of redundant or non-redundant text–picture combinations or only texts. Analysis of variance revealed negative effects of the depictive representations on students’ performance, but these effects only occurred in 1 of the 2 tasks: Students in the text-only group reached the highest mean score, those who worked with the non-redundant text–picture combinations the lowest mean score. Implications for science education are discussed.

摘要

文本和不同类型图片的组合在生物学中和在科学中一样普遍。构成文本-图片组合的单个表示（即文本，图片）可能包含冗余或补充信息。识别和整合各种文本-图片组合中的信息的能力对于从事科学是必不可少的，并且通常期望在学校获得。在这项实验研究中，该研究尚未在独立机构注册机构中预先注册，N = 240名本科生从事2项构造响应的生物学任务，这些任务源自真实的期末考试，以获得高等教育入学资格。该材料在条件之间具有相等的信息，但由冗余或非冗余的文本-图片组合或仅文本组成。方差分析显示了描述性表征对学生表现的负面影响，但这些影响仅发生在以下两项任务中的一项：纯文本组的学生平均得分最高，那些使用非冗余文本的学生图片组合的最低平均得分。讨论了对科学教育的意义。