Learning with summaries: Effects of representation mode and type of learning activity on comprehension and transfer

► Pictorial summaries facilitated comprehension and transfer performance compared to verbal summaries. ► Predefined summaries facilitated transfer performance compared to learner-generated summaries. ► The quality of students' spatial representations mediated the effect of the representation mode on transfer performance. ► Mental imagery partly mediated the effect of representation mode on the quality of students' visual-spatial representations.