Aids to Audience Decision Making 171If the audience needs to perform a task that requires them to act in a particular way, a liveor video demonstration may be most helpful. For example, student teachers learn more about
interacting with students by watching video examples of experienced teachers in the classroom
than by reading narrative texts that describe teacher–student interactions.^275 Similarly, medical
students learn more from video presentations of a patient’s case than from text narratives of the
same case.^276 Viewers of on-screen instructions fi nd animated demonstrations of procedures that
involve motion to be clearer and easier to follow than static graphics.^277 However, static graphics
inserted into video animations can increase viewers’ comprehension and recall of more complex
procedures.^278
When their task is to choose among many different products, consumers prefer visual depic-tions to verbal descriptions of products regardless of the number of products they are choosing
among. Consumers prefer visual depictions even when there is no natural visual representation
of the product category (e.g., mutual funds) and even when verbal descriptions facilitate greater
product differentiation (e.g., differentiating among nail polishes in a similar color). For large
choice sets of unfamiliar products, visual depictions help consumers scan the alternatives faster.
However, visual depictions may also lead them to make less thorough product comparisons and
may even decrease the likelihood they make any choice at all.^279
Task-Based Organization
Similar to task-based section headings and formats, a task-based organization of the contents of a
document or presentation can help the audience locate the information it needs when it needs it.
Users fi nd training manuals easier to follow when the contents of the manuals refl ect the struc-
ture of the task they are trying to perform.^280 Manuals and other forms of instructions that use a
task-based organization are both faster to use and require fewer examples and elaborations to
be effective.^281
When the audience’s task is to comprehend and recall, an organizational structure thatadheres to the appropriate genre schema promotes effi cient information acquisition. For exam-
ple, newspaper readers fi nd newspaper articles easier to comprehend when the articles adhere
to the “newspaper schema”—headlines, leads, major events, consequences, commentaries, and
evaluations.^282 College students read history texts faster when the texts follow the standard
organizational sequence of goal-attempt-outcome as compared to a reordered sequence.^283 In
a study of story recall, one group of readers read a story written in the conventional way and
another group read the same story with its sentences presented in a scrambled order. Readers
who read the story in its original order, an order that conformed to their story schema, recalled
85% of the facts in it. Those who read the story in the scrambled order recalled only 32% of
the facts in it.^284
A task-based organization will be less effective if the layout of the document or presentationslides does not make that organization clear. Audiences make inferences about the intended reading
sequence and organization of a text based on its layout on the page or presentation slide. Unfor-
tunately, the audience’s inferences about the intended reading sequence do not always match the
intended reading sequence of the writer.^285 A study of science textbooks, for example, found their
page layouts often made it diffi cult for students to determine the order in which the information
was intended to be read. Students’ actual reading order was quite different from the order the text-
book writers intended.^286 Readers can more easily see the organization of a text when the layout
keeps the number of different line lengths to a minimum.^287 Readers can also make more accurate