PROCESSING CHALLENGES OF UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX ANIMATED PICTURES

The construction of a high quality mental model from a complex visual display relies on the capacity of learners to extract appropriate info rmation from that display. Beginning students of meteorology complied written records of generalisations extracted from animated weather map sequences in order to prepare themselves for a subsequent prediction task. Analysis of these records revealed that much of the information extracted was perceptually salient rather than thematically relevant. This perceptual dominance effect was found for both visuospatial and t emporal aspects of the display. The statements produced were deficient with regard to the causal explanations that would be necessary to bui ld a satisfactory mental model of the depicted situation. These defici encies involved both the proportion of causal material recorded and th e attribution of causality on an everyday rather than a domain-appropr iate basis.