Peer-reviewed article
The modality and redundancy effects in multimedia learning in children with dyslexia
Carolien A. N. Knoop‐van Campen, Eliane Segers, Ludo T. W. Verhoeven ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how children with dyslexia learn from multimedia lessons that combine pictures with different types of text. Researchers compared 26 children with dyslexia and 38 typical readers as they studied lessons presented with written text only, audio only, or both together. Children with dyslexia spent more time on written text lessons but learned equally well from all three formats, suggesting that adding audio support makes learning more efficient for them.
Key points
- Children with dyslexia spent significantly more study time in the written text condition compared to audio-only and combined text-audio conditions
- No significant differences in knowledge gain were found between the three presentation modalities for either group
- A reversed redundancy effect was observed: combined text and audio was not more effective than audio alone for children with dyslexia
- Working memory differences between groups did not explain the modality or redundancy effects
- Audio or auditory support is more efficient for multimedia learning in children with dyslexia
Limitations
The study uses a small sample size (26 children with dyslexia) and measures only immediate knowledge gain, not retention over time. The within-subjects design may not account for order effects or learning fatigue across conditions.
Abstract
The present study aimed to examine the modality and redundancy effects in multimedia learning in children with dyslexia in order to find out whether their learning benefits from written and/or spoken text with pictures. We compared study time and knowledge gain in 26 11-year-old children with dyslexia and 38 typically reading peers in a within-subjects design. All children were presented with a series of user-paced multimedia lessons in 3 conditions: pictorial information presented with (a) written text, (b) audio, or (c) combined text and audio. We also examined whether children's learning outcomes were related to their working memory. With respect to study time, we found modality and reversed redundancy effects. Children with dyslexia spent more time learning in the text condition, compared with the audio condition and the combined text-and-audio condition. Regarding knowledge gain, no modality or redundancy effects were evidenced. Although the groups differed on working memory, it did not influence the modality or redundancy effect on study time or knowledge gain. In multimedia learning, it thus is more efficient to provide children with dyslexia with audio or with auditory support.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Presentation of multimedia lessons with pictorial information paired with written text only, audio only, or combined written text and audio
- Population
- 26 children with dyslexia and 38 typically reading peers, aged 11 years
Key finding
Children with dyslexia spent more time studying in the written text condition than in audio-only condition and combined text-audio condition