Learning with dynamic and static visualizations: Realistic details only benefit learners with high visuospatial abilities

• Learners with dynamic visualizations outperformed learners with static ones.
• This effect held true for recognition, but not for factual knowledge.
• There was no interaction between dynamism and realism of the visualizations.
• Schematic visualizations fostered recognition for low-visuospatial-ability learners.
• Realistic visualizations fostered recognition for high-visuospatial-ability learners.

Learning environments can nowadays easily be enriched with different presentation formats of visualizations, because computer graphics technology is constantly and rapidly developing. This study investigates the effectiveness of dynamic compared to static visualizations. Moreover, the influence of realistic details in the visualizations as well as learners’ prerequisites in terms of their visuospatial abilities were addressed. Eighty university students were randomly assigned to four conditions of a two-by-two between subjects design with the two independent variables dynamism and realism. Learning outcomes were measured by means of a verbal factual knowledge test about the terminology and visuospatial details and a pictorial recognition test about the dynamic processes. Data analyses revealed no effects for factual knowledge. With respect to recognition, learners with dynamic visualizations outperformed learners with static visualizations. Furthermore, there was an interaction between learners’ visuospatial abilities and the degree of realism in the visualization: learners with lower visuospatial abilities showed better recognition with schematized visualizations, whereas learners with higher visuospatial abilities showed better recognition with realistic visualizations. The results imply that when designing instructional materials, both the type of knowledge that has to be acquired as well as learners’ prerequisites such as their visuospatial abilities need to be considered.