ABSTRACT
Before the turn of the century, most of the instructional research on animation was conducted with a focus on computer-assisted learning and human-computer interaction and with much less of a focus on the cognitive processing of graphics. The research conducted at the turn of the century revealed a shift from asking whether animation was more effective than static visualization to when and why animation would make a difference and for whom. The lack of the beneficial effect of animation over static graphics has often been attributed to factors external to the representation itself, but related to the way the animation was delivered to the learners. User control over the pace of the animation was one of the first factors investigated in the literature. The fundamental assumption for using animation is that a continuous visualization of change over time is the most direct mapping for the mental representation of dynamic information.
