By John Oates for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
Humans just don't like absorbing information verbally and
visually at the same time – one or the other is fine but not both
simultaneously.
Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia
found the brain is limited in the amount of information it can
absorb – and presenting the same information in visual and verbal
form – like reading from a typical Powerpoint slide – overloads
this part of memory and makes absorbing information more
difficult.
Professor Sweller said: "The use of the PowerPoint presentation
has been a disaster. It should be ditched.
"It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents
information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak
the same words that are written, because it is putting too much
load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is
being presented."
The theory of "cognitive load theory" suggest the memory can
deal with two or three tasks for a period of a few seconds – any
more than that and information starts to get lost.
There's more from the Sydney Morning Herald
here, or there's an abstract of Sweller's work (pdf)
here.
Professor John Sweller is not the first to question the
overarching power of Powerpoint. Edward Tufte is a professor
emeritus at Yale and an information and interface design expert.
His 2003 book The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out
Corrupts Within makes similar claims.
© The Register
2007
