Gyselinck, V. & Tardieu, H. (1994). The role of text illustrations in the construction of non-spatial mental models. In F. d. Jong & B. van Hout-Wolters (Eds.), Process-Oriented Instruction and Learning from TextI (p. 175-181). Amsterdam: VU University Press.

Text comprehension is currently assumed to lead to the construction of a propositional representation and of a mental model. Because of its analogical structure, a mental model shares many characteristics with an image of the world described by the text. Illustrations can be viewed as particular figurations of the world denoted by the sentences which are illustrated and hence could assist in mental model building. In this chapter, we will test the hypothesis that illustrations can help to build mental models of texts even in domains of discourse that are not exclusively spatial. The theoretical grounds and the findings of some recent experiments that contribute to validate this hypothesis are presented. The discussion is focused on some possible explanations of the beneficial effect of illustrations and on the conditions for illustrations to be effective.