Principle 03
Dual-Coding
Hold the graph in language and in space at once.
- Function
- Parallel verbal / visuospatial encoding
- Substrates
- Perisylvian language · occipitotemporal · parietal
- Intervention
- Annotated diagrams with spoken or written equations
- In transfer
- Raises working-memory bandwidth without a third channel of noise.
Paivio’s two stores — logogens and imagens — are independent retrieval paths. Mayer’s multimedia theory adds the constraint: two channels, both limited. Dual coding increases encoding routes; it does not increase Cowan’s capacity limit.
A mapping that exists only as prose will be re-verbalized as jargon. A mapping that exists only as a pretty diagram will not survive contact with a numeric case. One diagram, one equation — do not narrate the diagram in on-screen prose.
Paivio 1986; Mayer 2014