Augmenting text with multiple pictures can facilitate online information processing across language barriers

Abstract

Language is a barrier for many non-native English speaking users to benefit from huge resources of information via the Internet. Many approaches have been tried to enhance web content comprehension, including the use of pictorial support. In this paper, we present a two-step exploration of whether augmenting ordinary text content with multiple imagery representations could foster people's process of online information. The first step consisted of two studies, i.e. a food - ingredient matching study and a treatment - illness matching study, which evaluated the efficacy of a combination of text and pictures in facilitating information discrimination and decision making. In the second step, we assessed participants' comprehension and recall of complex scenarios in medical care for online self-diagnoses with the help of image sequences. We used non-native English speakers to resemble language barriers. Results showed that participants' performance was improved significantly with the multi-picture support when people's language skills are limited.