This study investigated the effect of different types of bimodal presentations on learning. We randomly assigned participants to 1 of 3 presentation modalities: audiovisual, audio-textual, or visual-textual. Each participant completed a computer tutorial about the midbrain and the hindbrain. Subsequently, we administered a 42-item memory test to the participants. The multiple-choice test consisted of 28 verbal questions derived from the textual information and 14 visual questions derived from the pictorial information. There was a significant mean difference among the total visual test scores of participants assigned to the visual-textual modality and those assigned to the audiovisual or audio-textual modalities. However, there was no significant difference among the 3 bimodalities on total score in the verbal section of the memory test. Continued study is needed to examine further the effect of each bimodality as a predictor of actual test performance.

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