Scientists from the New South Wales University in Australia have studied, again, the effects Microsoft PowerPoint has on viewers of presentations made with the help of this software.
The Australian scientists think that according to the "cognitive load theory" the human brain cannot receive and 'decode' visual and audio information at the same time for longer than a few seconds. Thus information consisting of diagrams and graphs accompanied by speech would be perceived easily; nevertheless printed text accompanied by speech would not let the audience understand the presentation as it was meant to be understood.
These researches, and their results, are not the first to study the effects of PowerPoint on human brain. In 2003 professor at Yale University, Edward Tufte, wrote a book, called "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within", which was also about the harm of using PowerPoint presentation.
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