Do you remember what you hear or what you see better? It’s a question that researchers have been studying for a very, very long time. But it’s not one that we’ve been able to come to a consensus on yet. So maybe it’s time to shift our question about presentation visuals. Maybe, instead of studying which one is better, we should study how they work together.
Today we’ll briefly cover some research on auditory and visual learning, and then we’ll share why we need them both.
The Breakdown
As I said, we keep trying to figure out whether auditory learning or visual learning is better. I’ll give you a quick overview of the research. Most studies show that auditory learning is more effective when the content being listed doesn’t have inherent meaning for the listener. In other words, if you encounter a list of letters, you’ll probably remember more of them if you hear them rather than if you see them.
But for more meaningful items, research has proven that visual presentation tends to resonate with us faster and stick with us a little better. That phenomenon was explained in a neurobiological study by Monica M. Munoz-Lopez and colleagues who found that this is due to the different pathways auditory and visual input have to take. To put it simply, visuals take the brain highway, but sounds tend to take the scenic route.
However, when was the last time you had to choose to present only auditory or only visual information? I’m guessing rarely. If ever. So instead of asking which one we should choose, we need to know why we should choose them both.
Why We Need Both
Presenting comes out of the world of public speaking. And for most of its history, it has been a largely auditory medium. Up until fairly recently, we didn’t have the technology to support our public messages. But we do now. That’s why I believe our question of auditory vs. visual information is becoming outdated. While research has been unable to come to a consensus of which one is better, we do know that a third option, the combination of both, is the best. Research shows that when an auditory message is reinforced with visuals, the audience engages, processes, and recalls better than when those forms of information stand alone. Remember those brain pathways we talked about? When you use both auditory and visual information in your presentation, you “light up” more areas of the brain.
Communication professor Paul Martin Lester cites the work of education psychologist Jerome Bruner of New York University who says that we remember about 10% of what we hear, about 30% of what we read (that’s visual), and about 80% of what we see and do. This proves that when we combine visual and auditory channels, our presentations are more effective.
But you won’t reap the benefits of visual communication if your slides are simply bullet-point lists or printed text of what you are saying. To get to that 80%, you need to let words be words and visuals be visuals. Use your slides to communicate something words can’t. Things like the face of someone affected by an issue, the flowchart of the steps in a process, or the picture of an unfamiliar place.
So the question isn’t whether we learn better through auditory or visual presentations. We know that answer. We need both. Use your energy and creativity to figure out how you can use both streams of communication to get that important message across.
Need help designing powerful, attractive presentation visuals? We can help.
