Mayer and Moreno start out by explaining how words and pictures are processed differently, but both processes take significant cognitive resources. Most of these examples are broken down into two channels: visual and audio. If presented with too much information at once, the learner can reach cognitive overload. Most lay people, would see conflicts between these two channels as simple distraction, however the the authors explain why this distraction takes place.
The paper gives several example of how cognitive overload can happen. It is a designers responsibility to make sure that both channels are engaged equally. If too much information is funneled into one channel, it will lead to overload. One such example was that eyes cannot look at two different places at once. The paper talked about a scenario where text and graphics were shown in two different places in the screen at the same times. This is distracting to the learner, because they do not know where they should look. The suggested solution was to take part of the visual task away and make it an audio task by narrating the text. The learner can now solely look at the graphics while using their audio channel to listen to the text, thus reducing the load on the visual channel.
Most of these examples seem like common sense, however, this paper puts it in very scientific terms. Most people realize that listening to two different narration at once is not feasible, but the reading explains why it is scientifically impossible for the brain to process this type of information.
Overall, this paper had some useful information that gives designers something to think about when creating properly engaging instruction, by pointing out that balance between channels is key.
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