Learning from Visual Materials: A Psycho-Didactic Experiment

Introduction: The authors consider a book (as a pedagogical text) a traditional and timeless source of knowledge for many different groups of learners. It is a known fact that textbook authors, teachers, researchers, etc. generally pay more attention to the text part of the book than to its visual materials. However, the latter are just as important in understanding the subject matter and its applications as textual information on the topic.

Methods: The psycho-didactic experiment described in this paper aims to widen the findings about the perception and understanding of visual parts of textbooks for pupils in their first years of schooling. In the paper, a less-known research method based on eye-tracking is presented.

Results: The main results of the research are as follows: According to the findings of the authors, each pupil accepts and understands visual materials individually and this acceptance and understanding of visual materials is influenced by pupils’ personality traits. The research also shows that pupils prefer visual materials that depict reality as accurately as possible.

Conclusions: The research was designed as a case study which could be used for further research of a similar form.