Compositional design of animation improves comprehension of complex dynamics

Learners have difficulty in decomposing conventionally designed animations to obtain raw material suitable for building high quality mental models. A composition approach to designing animations based on the Animation Processing Model was developed as a principled alternative to prevailing approaches. It provides learners with pre-decomposed material that is structured and sequenced to facilitate the relation building required for effective mental model construction. Study of a compositional animation that presented material in a contiguous fashion resulted in higher quality mental models of a piano mechanism than non-contiguous or control (conventional) versions. Eye fixation data indicated that the compositional animation led to superior mental models because it particularly fostered relational processing.