Communication potential of pictorial illustrations

Summary As readability studies have investigated factors which influence the reading difficulty of verbal text, so this study has been a beginning attempt to isolate the factors which influence the communication potential of illustrative material. It is interesting to note that as readability researchers have found a correlational relationship between idea density (number of different ideas per number of running words) and reading difficulty, so this study has shown an inverse relationship between complexity of an illustration and its effectiveness in communicating clearly. Similarly, as readability studies show that we must use words that are familiar to the reader, so we must present visual concepts in terms of the background of experience of the intended viewer. And as in constructing effective textual material we must organize our material logically, eliminating the unnecessary, so we must simplify the design of illustration, taking care, of course, not to lose the essential. In this study the author presents some important insights into the factors that influence the communication potential of pictorial illustrations. Seth Spaulding is a program specialist of the Ford Foundation's field staff, currently advising the Burma Translation Society in Rangoon, Burma.     

Misleading illustrations

Conclusion The responses and the reasons given for those responses suggest that many of these first year students were not able to read and interpret diagrams in a critical manner and recognise their limitations. Rather, they depend on a qualitative global appreciation of the relationships involved and do not distinguish between the diagram and the model it represents. The overall pattern of responses on the test was consistent with the common errors identified in textbook diagrams. Such diagrams (see those which appear below) are notably qualitative and do not attempt to accurately portray relationships quantitatively. It appears as if such diagrams represent reality for many students. This finding has important implications for science teaching because it is known that the conceptual model held by a learner influences subsequent learning.     

Learning from pictorial analogies

The use of visualisation in learning material is increasing rapidly. Three major categories of pictures or illustrations are distinguished: representational pictures, logical pictures, and pictorial analogies. This article concentrates on pictorial analogies of which the cognitive functioning depends on identical relations between two non-identical domains. To get more insight into the crucial parameters of pictorial analogies in combination with expository text, two investigatory studies with physics materials are reported. The results show that the use of pictorial analogies can improve learning significantly if they are designed properly and used together with the expository text to be studied. Pictorial analogies should be carefully developed in regard to high structural similarity between the base and the target domain. Understanding of the analogical relationship is supported by inter-connecting the information text closely with references to the relevant features of the pictorial analogy.     

The psychophysics of pictorial perception

Summary Pictorial communication of shape and form is not simply a learned visual language. Whatever processes of learning, if any, underly our ability to perceive represented surfaces’ edges-without which the communication of shape is impossible-in response to outline drawings, probably occurs very early in life in consequence of our normal commerce with spatial objects. Although this probability makes the problems of“learning to see pictures”relatively inaccessible, it simplifies the study of the rules which govern edge- and surface-perception in pictures. The applicability of such rules depends, eventually, on knowing This paper is part of an investigation of pictorial psychophysics supported by the National Science Foundation, NSF-G9601.     

Can pictorial attributes serve mathemagenic functions?

Using mathemagenic-based research, the authors attempted to determine if the location or type of a picture affects reading comprehension. College students read a passage and then answered multiple-choice questions that assessed different types of incidental learning. Generally, subjects who viewed a picture after reading the passage scored higher than those who viewed before reading.     

治愈系插画的审美研究

插画是穿插在文本中的插图,随着现代社会经济的发展,人们心理逐渐出现一些问题:自卑、虚荣、脆弱......,于是产生了治愈系插画,治愈系插画运用绘画和摄影等多种创作方式,巧妙的构图结构、色彩变化,从而使受众达到精神上的愉悦和心灵上的安慰。治愈系插画具有独特的审美特征,它的审美特征促使大众对其进行审美接受。     

Building a stock of illustrations

TIME AND NARRATIVE: Volume I. By Paul Ricoeur. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984; pp. xii + 274. $25.00.

NOVELS AND ARGUMENTS: INVENTING RHETORICAL CRITICISM. By Zahava Karl McKeon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982; pp. 260. paper $22.50.

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Edited by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: The Hegeler Institute (The Monist Library of Philosophy), 1983. pp. 285. $29.95.

THE VARIETIES OF ENCHANTMENT: EARLY GREEK VIEWS OF THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF POETRY. George B. Walsh. University of North Carolina Press, 1984. pp. ix plus 170. $18.00.

THE BOOK OF THE HONEYCOMB'S FLOW. By Judah Messer Leon. Translated by Isaac Rabinowitz. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1983; pp. ixx + 604. $59.50.

THE ART OF BIBLICAL NARRATIVE. By Robert Alter. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1981; pp. xii + 195. $14.50; paper $7.95.

THE GREAT CODE: THE BIBLE AND LITERATURE. By Northrop Frye. A Harvest/HBJ Book. San Diego/New York/London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1981; pp. xxiii + 261. $14.95; paper $8.95.

RELIGIOUS TELEVISION: THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. By Peter G. Horsfield. Forward by George Gerbner and Stewart Hoover. New York: Longman, Inc., 1984; pp. xv + 193. $15.00.

REGARDING TELEVISION: CRITICAL APPROACHES—AN ANTHOLOGY. Edited by E. Ann Kaplan. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1983; pp. xxiii + 147. $25; paper $10.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: FURTHER ESSAYS IN INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGY. By Clifford Geertz. New York: Basic Books, 1983; pp. viii + 244. $18.50.

A FEELING FOR THE ORGANISM: THE LIFE AND WORK OF BARBARA McCLIN‐TOCK. By Evelyn Fox Keller. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1983; pp. xv + 235. $8.95.     

The effectiveness of teaching science with pictorial analogies

This study used a conceptual problem solving test to investigate the effect of a series of pictorial analogies on the concepts of density, pressure, and atmospheric pressure in Year 8 classrooms. The analogies were taught following Glynn's teaching with analogies model. It was found that the students taught with the pictorial analogies scored significantly higher than their counterparts (p<01). In addition, the low achievers benefited more from this teaching strategy than did the high achievers. Further, qualitative analysis revealed that most of the students' alternative conceptions were from preexisting naive intuitions rather than arising from analog instruction.     

Responsiveness of Nigerian students to pictorial depth cues

Because research has indicated that many students in the developing countries find it hard to understand depth portrayal in Western pictures, the authors tested three groups of Nigerian high school and college students for response to four pictorial depth cues. Their tests, which used ball-and-rod models originally devised for teaching chemistry, showed no one cue to be effective with all students. The students had more difficulty with cues concerning the relative size of objects and the fore-shortening of straight lines than with cues involving overlap of lines and distortion of the angles between lines. This study was conducted within a link scheme between the University of Lagos and the University of East Anglia. The authors thank the Inter-University Council for Higher Education Overseas, sponsor of the scheme, and the University of Lagos for their kind and generous assistance.