Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Peer-reviewed scholarly documents like empirical journal articles are the vehicles through which scientific discoveries arecommunicated, critiqued, and applied to practical contexts. Whether these papers are published in print journals or hostedon websites, readers experience significant learning barriers. Consider, for instance, the difficulty of reading experimentalmethodologies. Articles usually describe complex methods using static text and images. This approach limits learningon an individual level and collective scientific progress. Here, I explored whether interactive simulations of experimentaltasks interleaved with text may better convey methodological information in a psychological journal article. In a laboratoryexperiment, novice undergraduate students studied an article composed of (1) text and images, (2) text and videos, or (3)text and interactive simulations of experimental tasks. Posttest scores and responses to a questionnaire favored interactivesimulations. Results are interpreted using multiple learning theories.