Quando un grafico non vale diecimila parole. Problemi di integrazione nello studio del testo con figure.

Many texts, hypertexts and multimedia also ask the reader to consider visual information in the form of diagrams, graphs and tables. An illustration, graph or animation accompanying a text is thought to have a positive effect on the understanding and memorising of information and thus to be useful in schools and in other environments. Unfortunately, many factors can reduce the benefits thought linked to figures - first of all, the inadequate or even lack of student processing of the figures themselves. Hence the need to stimulate the processing of figures and the integration of textual and visual information - a productive, but often tiresome, task - through actions that could increase student arousal and attention. This article reports the result of a study that attempted to stimulate text-graphics integration. We asked our subjects to reprocess the contents of a newspaper article containing a text and six diagrams by using one of two different techniques: writing a summary or drawing a graph. The analysis of the students’ notes and of their results in a learning test provided us with information on the usefulness of the two strategies for integrating information.