Images as a possible moderator for the disfluency effect

Perception. 2021. Vol. 50. No. 1S. P. 157–157.

Berezner T., Gorbunova E. S.

The disfluency effect is that information which is difficult to read due to low perceptual clarity (e.g. certain fonts, italics) is remembered better than information written clearly, and it can lead to better learning outcomes (Diemand-Yauman et al., 2011). This effect was demonstrated in several studies, whereas their results were not replicated in subsequent researches (Xie et al., 2018). It has been suggested that this effect may not be apparent in certain contexts, since it has moderators. We assumed that one of these moderators might be the presence of images accompanying the texts. The following experiment was conducted online. Seven fictional facts about the Earth, consisting of two sentences in Russian, were presented for participants (N = 142), they had to assess the plausibility of each fact. After that, a short distracting task was given, and finally, the subjects solved a test of 14 questions. The subjects were divided into four experimental groups. In two groups, the facts were written in the Arial font (fluent), in others, Comic Sans (disfluent) was used. In addition, in two groups, the facts were accompanied by relevant images, while in the others they were not. We found a significant influence of images on memory, namely, their presence worsened memory, they were probably a distractor for reading facts. There were no differences depending on disfluency, and the interaction of factors was also insignificant. Moreover, the plausibility score did not depend on fluency or the presence of images. [The study was implemented in the framework of the Basic Research Program at HSE University in 2021.]

Keywords: disfluency effect

Publication based on the results of: Solving cognitive tasks in interaction with digital interfaces (2021)