Are Seductive Details Detrimental to Learning?

 

As college students many are aware of having to read long, plain textbooks or lectures with little motivation. However, increasingly teachers have used other methods to bring students attention to learning through sidenotes, graphics, illustrations, even in newer textbooks. Mainly as a source of fun but irrelevant information called seductive details. As a student that prefers visual learning, I have always found these breaks from plain text quite alluring. But previous studies, such as a meta-analysis Rey (2012), on this subject have concluded these details harm learning on students through its distraction. Will we have to be plagued with long boring lectures again to learn better? Well, that is what the Dr. Eitel, Dr. Bender, and Dr. Renkl (2019) were trying to find out. Their fundamental hypothesis focused on why these seductive details are so detrimental, by measuring their false belief in relevancy.

                In this study, the experimenters focused on three avenues to which seductive details can be bound by perceived relevance, cognitive load, and time pressure that mitigate learning efforts. Meaning, if students perceived seductive details as relevant, if these details can put a cognitive burden on them, and whether too much time was taken out from focusing on these details. Thus, to test their hypotheses. experimenters randomly assigned 84 undergraduate students in a control with no seductive details, and uninformed vs informed seductive detail condition then self-reported their own perceived awareness of time pressure, cognitive load, and manipulation of the experiment. Then the learning outcomes of these participants were rated independently to measure what effect each condition had on them after each participant wrote their recall of what they had learned in their condition.  Ultimately the researchers concluded from their results that perceived relevance and cognitive load had a significant detriment to learning material. However, when students were informed of the seductive details design (they are not relevant but interesting information), these detriments are mitigated more easily. As well, due to these uninformed seductive details, more cognitive processing took place on students leading to worse off outcomes. Ultimately, the researchers were able to conclude the definitionally of previous research is now put into question and may not be harmful to student learning after all.

                While this study is very niche topic about essentially fun pictures in textbooks, I found it interesting for both its measurements and implications with sensible findings. As a person who is easily distracted and can’t be bothered to read /sit still without some engagement, I find it helpful from their results that seductive details in the classroom can easily be mitigated and have a boundary effect that doesn’t distract from learning outcomes overall. Classrooms and textbooks should be fun and sometimes lighthearted in their approach to learning thus giving students a reprieve when ingesting heavy material all the time, hours, and hours a day. 

Eric Brehmer

Eitel, A., Bender, L., & Renkl, A. (2019). Are seductive details seductive only when you think they are relevant? An experimental test of the moderating role of perceived relevance. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 33(1), 20-30. doi:10.1002/acp.3479