Engaging visuals may be detrimental to child learning. Researchers have found that visuals in textbooks designed to captivate children may distract them from the information and procedures the visuals are designed to teach.
The study found that when teaching six- to eight year-old children how to read a bar graph, plain and monochrome worked better than graphs with images (like shoes or flowers).
The pictures directed attention away from the information that was necessary, researchers said.
Read more at Ohio State University