Do social cues in instructional videos affect attention allocation, perceived cognitive load, and learning outcomes under different visual complexity conditions?

Background: There are only few guidelines on how instructional videos should be designed to optimize learning. Recently, the effects of social cues on attention allocation and learning in instructional videos have been investigated. Due to inconsistent results, it has been suggested that the visual complexity of a video influences the effect of social cues on learning. Objectives: Therefore, this study compared the effects of social cues (i.e., gaze & gesture) in low and high visual complexity videos on attention, perceived cognitive load, and learning outcomes. Methods: Participants (N = 71) were allocated to a social cue or no social cue condition and watched both a low and a high visual complexity video. After each video, participants completed a knowledge test. Results and Conclusions: Results showed that participants looked faster at referenced information and had higher learning outcomes in the low visual complexity condition. Social cues did not affect any of the dependent variables, except when including prior knowledge in the analysis: In this exploratory analysis, the inclusion of gaze and gesture cues in the videos did lead to better learning outcomes. Takeaways: Our results show that the visual complexity of instructional videos and prior knowledge are important to take into account in future research on attention and learning from instructional videos. Lay Description: What is already known about the topic: Instructional videos are widely used in education.Learners need to timely attend to relevant content to learn successfully.Learners' attention might be guided towards relevant content with social cues (gaze and gesture of a presenter or instructor) but findings regarding learning outcomes are inconclusive. What does this paper add: This paper is the first to examine the role of the visual complexity of an instructional video in the interplay between social cues (gaze and gesture), learners' attention allocation, and learning outcomes. Implications for practice: The results show that visual complexity influences the learners' attention allocation and learning outcomes.Social cues (i.e., gaze & gesture) improved learning outcomes when controlling for learners' prior knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]