Abstracts - Earli

discussed in terms of the opportunities that eye tracking approaches offer for studying the on-lineprocesses involved in an individual’s development of a high quality mental model from ananimation. Limitations of using eye-tracking methodologies for such investigations will also beconsidered and possibilities for complementary approaches explored.Eye movements of differently knowledgeable learners during learning with split-source orintegrated formatGabriele Cierniak, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, GermanyKatharina Scheiter, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, GermanyPeter Gerjets, Knowledge Media Research Center, GermanyThe aim of this study is to compare general assumptions about reading different multimediainstructions (labelled pictures in an integrated format vs. split-attention format) with eye-trackingdata from learners’ actual reading behaviour. Theoretical assumptions from multimedia andcognitive load research about the way learners visually process physically integrated and splitattentioninstructions of labelled pictures are investigated empirically. Eye-tracking is used toempirically identify different processing strategies. Furthermore, it is tried to relate the effects ofvisual attention allocation on learning outcome. Eye movement data of the first participants wereanalysed so far in three different ways: the amount of time spent on text vs. picture areas, theoscillation rate between text and picture information and the linearity of processing. Priorknowledge is considered to influence the reading pattern and learning outcome. The first resultsshow that the empirical data confirm some of the theoretical assumptions.E 1629 August 2007 14:30 - 16:30Room: 0.79 JánossySymposiumRelations between external and internal knowledge representations inmathematics learningChair: Michael Schneider, ETH Zurich, SwitzerlandOrganiser: Michael Schneider, ETH Zurich, SwitzerlandDiscussant: Daniel Ansari, University of Western Ontario, CanadaMany key theorists in psychology, among them Newell and Simon, Piaget, and Vygotsky, haveemphasized the general importance of knowledge representation. Representations facilitate thestability of knowledge over time and across different situations, both in individuals and socialcommunities. However, they also allow for dynamic transformations of knowledge. The respectivestructure of a representation guides attention. It eases certain actions and inferences, while itaggravates others (i.e., affordances and constraints of representations). In research on mathematicslearning, cognitive psychologists have focussed predominantly on the roles of internal, that is,mental, knowledge representations, such as conceptual and procedural knowledge, verbal andvisual representations in long-time and working memory, and the mental number line. In contrast,pedagogical researchers have investigated more thoroughly the roles of external knowledgerepresentations, like graphs, notational systems for numbers, and symbol systems in general.However, internal and external knowledge representations are not independent of each other.– 291 –