ABSTRACT
In research on the role of illustrations, several authors have attempted to explain the facilitative effect of illustrations on memory. Probably the most notable and most widely known is Paivio (1971, 1986) and his dual-code theory. According to this theory, at least two coding systems are available: a verbal system and a nonverbal system. These two systems are independent although interconnected. Pictures are automatically stored both in the nonverbal system and in the verbal system, whereas the reverse would not be as systematic. As a result, pictures would be memorized as such by the reader who would benefit from two memory traces, one in a verbal form and one in a nonverbal form. This theory has proved very useful to explain many memory effects, such as the image-superiority effect and the concreteness effect. At first glance, Paivio’s theory could also interpret the role of text illustrations on memory. However, it is not clear how the dual-code theory would account for text comprehension per se. Indeed, no assumption is made about the construction of mental representations during the reading process, nor about the levels of representations in which the interaction between text and illustrations takes place.
