MAYER'S COGNITIVE THEORY OF MULTIMEDIA LEARNING

              Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning

Firstly, let's get to know about the multimedia principle. The multimedia principle states that “people learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone”.  However, simply adding words to pictures is not an effective way to achieve multimedia learning.  The goal is to instructional media in the light of how the human mind works.  This is the basis for Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning.  This theory proposes three main assumptions when it comes to learning with multimedia:

• There are two separate channels known as auditory and visual for processing information. And, it is also referred to as Dual-coding Theory,

• Each channel has a limited capacity,

• Learning is an active process of filtering, selecting, organizing, and integrating information based upon prior knowledge.

Humans can only process a finite amount of information in a channel at a time, and they make sense of incoming information by actively creating mental representations.   Mayer also discusses the role of three memory stores: sensory (which receives stimuli and stores it for a very short time), working (where we actively process information to create mental constructs (or ‘schema’), and long-term (the repository of all things learned).  Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning presents the idea that the brain does not interpret a multimedia presentation of words, pictures, and auditory information in a mutually exclusive fashion; rather, these elements are selected and organized dynamically to produce logical mental constructs. Furthermore, Mayer underscores the importance of learning (based upon the testing of content and demonstrating the successful transfer of knowledge) when new information is integrated with prior knowledge.
Design principles including providing coherent verbal, pictorial information, guiding the learners to select relevant words and images, and reducing the load for a single processing channel, etc. can be entailed from this theory.

Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning makes three assumptions about how humans process information: the dual-channel assumption, the limited-capacity assumption, and the active-processing assumption.

1. The Dual-Channel Assumption

According to Mayer, the dual-channel assumption dictates that humans possess separate channels for processing visual and auditory information. The first is the visual–pictorial channel, which processes images seen through the eyes (including words displayed on a screen). The other channel is the auditory-verbal channel, which processes spoken words.

2. The Limited-Capacity Assumption

The limited-capacity assumption suggests that humans have a hard limit on the amount of information they can process at any given moment. This is probably intuitive to anyone who’s sat in a sports bar and tried to watch several games at the same time or tried to listen to the news while having a conversation.

3. The Active-Processing Assumption

The active-processing assumption asserts that humans don’t learn by just passively absorbing information. Instead, they need to engage in active cognitive processes, namely identifying and selecting relevant material, organizing it into visual and/or verbal models, and integrating those new models with prior knowledge.