CAN STUDENT-GENERATED ILLUSTRATIONS BE WORTH 10000 WORDS

The major purpose of the present study was to determine if reader-gene rated illustrations are as effective as experimenter-provided illustra tions in providing students with the ability to understand scientific explanations. In addition, the authors were interested in replicating work by R. E. Mayer and colleagues (e.g., R. E. Mayer & R. B. Anderson , 1991; R. E. Mayer & J. K. Gallini, 1990) using different texts. The authors found that students with text and illustrations and students w ho generated their own illustrations performed better on a problem-sol ving test than students with text only and that there were no signific ant differences in performance between the former 2 groups.