5. General discussion
Empirical results on learning with animations compared to static pictures are somewhat mixed. However, a meta-analysis by Hof € fler and Leutner (2007) revealed a medium advantage of animations over static pictures. This superiority was especially the case when processes were to be learned. In this context, one could assume that annotating narrations plays an important role as they provide further information about the process in question, which also might be important to successfully understand the visualized process. Due to a lack of research on this topic, the aim was to investigate the role of process information in annotating narrations when learning with animations and static pictures. The underlying question was whether the amount of process information in narrations might affect learning with animations compared to static pictures differently. In two experiments, seventh and eighth graders had to learn about chemical processes during washing laundry and were randomly assigned to different learning conditions which resulted from the combination of different types of visualizations (study 1: no visualization vs. static pictures vs. animation; study 2: static pictures vs. animation) with different types of narrations (no narration vs. non-process narration vs. process narration).
