After the lecture, students studied the display they were given (outline, text, etc.) for 15 minutes. They were told that there would be three tests:
A test on facts. Question example: What is the size of the Brahmaputra basin?
A test to check relationships based on categories. Question example: Which rivers merge with other rivers?
A test to check “global relationships”. Question example: What is the connection between perennial rivers and their sources?
The students were tested immediately after the 15-minute period. They were tested again one week later and given the material to study again. Then they were tested one more time in the next phase. All tests in all the phases were the same.
What did the researchers find?
Outlines were found to be better than simple or extracted text, but the matrix was found to be the best.
It helped students to learn facts as well as relationships, while the texts did not.
The researchers also asked students to rate:
how easy they found their display to study
whether they felt they had enough time to study
how well-prepared they felt and
whether they would use the display in the future.
The matrix was rated positively on all counts.
The authors gave three reasons:
Signaling
Signaling makes it easy to find a specific piece of information. For example, if you want to know the source of the Godavari or the flow of the Indus, you can find it faster and more easily in a matrix as compared to a simple text.
Extraction
All the different displays conveyed the same information, but the matrix and the outline used fewer words. They kept (extracted) what was most important and left out the rest.
Localisation
Localisation means showing connected items near one another. For example, the matrix above shows the lengths of all the rivers in a single row. In a text, you would find the lengths of the rivers in different locations.
The simple text organized information based on the topic (Indus, Godavari, etc.) but the matrix organized it on the basis of topic and category.
Here’s a matrix with information on some common pets (inspired by the wildcat matrix in the study):
