How Do Multimedia Hints Affect Students' Eye Movements in Conceptual Physics Problems?

We investigated the effect of hint modality on students' eye movements on conceptual physics problems with diagrams. We recruited 57 students enrolled in a physics class for future elementary teachers. The participants were randomly assigned to conditions with no hints, visual hints, text hints, audio hints, and all possible hint modality combinations. We found that different hint modalities affect students' eye movements differently and the difference of students' eye movements relates to their problem-solving performance. The results of this study are different from the predictions based on Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML). Our results suggest that the cognitive process in physics problem solving may not be fully explained by CTML and therefore more research might be necessary in this area.