visual language

In a series of experiments involving college students, drawing pictures was found to be the best strategy for remembering lists of words.

A study into how well students understand specific diagrams reminds us that, while pictures may be worth 1000 words, even small details can make a significant difference to how informative they are.

The study focused on variously formatted cladograms (also known as phylogenetic trees) that are commonly used in high school and college biology textbooks. Such diagrams are hierarchically branching, and are typically used to show the evolutionary history of taxa.