Understanding Illustrations in Text

Textbook developers have two media available for communicating information: words and pictures or illustrations (Eisenberg, 1978). In spite of our society's bias in favor of verbal over pictorial forms of instruction (Gardner, 1983), a growing research base suggests that text illustrations can have powerful positive effects on students' learning (e.g., Levin, Anglin, & Carney, 1987; Mayer, 1989a). It follows that an effective way to improve the effectiveness of textbooks is to improve the effectiveness of textbook illustrations.