Does the Segmenting Principle Counteract the Modality Principle in Multimedia Instruction?

This study investigated the segmenting and modality principles in instructional animation. Two segmentation conditions (cued recall vs. pause only) were presented in combination with modality principle. The results showed that the significant effect was found in segmentation condition whereas the modality effect was not significant. The groups with cued recall between segments outperformed pause-only groups on both retention and transfer tests regardless of the modality of text. The findings imply that a stimulus (e.g., cued recall) would be more effective than only pauses between segments.