The idea that words and pictures together leads to a better and deeper learning than words alone might be a very easy thing to understand. Yet, in scientific inquiry we tend to go after these widely accepted and easily understandable notions, as time to time we realize it was something else that was having a causal relationship with the consequence we observe. We just didn’t see that link. And at times, we exaggerate or underestimate the effect of one on the other or we fabricate one when there is none. Here, I appreciate the experimental research in social sciences. It definitely has its limitations, because it’s hard to have such controlled environments in real life. Cause and effect is the most complicated in social studies and Occam’s Razor principle doesn’t work as efficiently as it does in Science. But, how are we to know that cause and effect relationship otherwise and not fell into false connections and a mere guess work.

This quote is the simplest and yet the most encompassing phrasing of the theory of Mayer. Yet, to be able to understand exactly his position one needs to read his work Multimedia Learning. And, I definitely recommend you to check the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning out if you’re creating multimedia for educational or even any other purpose online. He uses a language quite easy to understand and his principles are self explanatory. You may start with the multimedia principles as a pre-training to understand the theory. Stay curious!