부산대학교 도서관

Seductive details refer to information that is interesting but irrelevant to the learning objectives. Seductive details usually distract learners' attention and take up their limited cognitive resources, and thus have negative influences on multimedia learning. In order to take the benefits of seductive details in motivating learners while reducing their negative effects, some researchers adopted 'signaling principle' and 'relevance/irrelevance instruction' when designing learning materials. 'Signaling principle' and 'relevance/irrelevance instruction' are two instructional principles originally proposed to guide learners' attention to important content, and were occasionally adopted to reduce the negative effects of seductive details in recent years. Relevant research on this topic had diversified designs and inconsistent findings. Therefore, reviewing and comparing related literature will be of great inspiration for academic research and practical applications. This study adopts the literature review method to comprehensively review the two instructional principles for reducing seductive details effects, and the results indicated that relevance/irrelevance instruction was more effective than signaling principle in moderating the negative effects of seductive details. In particular, it was found that general-irrelevance instruction is more suitable for reminding learners of the presence of seductive details, while specific-relevance instruction is more suitable for reminding learners to focus on content more relevant to the learning objective. Based on the findings, this study suggests that when it is impossible to exclude all seductive details, relevance/irrelevance instruction could be added according to different learning objectives to avoid the seductive details effect.