Speaker/Gender Effect: Impact of the Speaker’s Gender on Learning with Narrated Animations

Current cognitive multimedia design theories provide several guidelines for how to integrate verbal and pictorial information. Based on a dual-channel information processing model, many authors have suggested using spoken rather than written text along with pictorial representations (e.g., animations). However, the directives for the design of auditory text (narration) are still fragmentary, especially with regard to the kind of voice to be used. In the current paper a very fundamental question regarding the implemented voice was addressed, namely, whether to use a male or a female voice for the presentation of verbal information in multimedia learning environments. In the experiment reported learners studied animations that aimed at teaching students how to solve probability problems. The expository text was presented as narration. The learner’s gender and the speaker’s gender were varied between subjects. The results show that learners achieved better learning outcomes when the narration was presented by a female speaker rather than a male speaker. This finding occurred irrespectively of the learner’s gender (speaker/gender effect). The results suggest augmenting purely cognitive approaches to multimedia design by social-motivational as-