An investigation of the effects of different types of activities during pauses in a segmented instructional animation

Since the complex and transient information in instructional animations requires more cognitive resources, the segmenting principle has been proposed to reduce cognitive overload by providing smaller chunks with pauses between segments. This study examined the effects of different types of activities during pauses in a segmented animation. Four groups were asked to do different tasks in system-controlled pauses after each segment of an instructional animation: passive pauses (i.e., no-reflection vs. reflection), and active pauses (i.e., free-recall vs. short-answer). The results showed that active pause with free-recall group outperformed the two passive pause groups on both recall and transfer tests. However, no significant differences in mental effort for the instruction or the tests were found. The findings of this study provide valuable implications for effective ways of using pauses between segments in instructional animations.