Manage Essential Processing
Table 3 summarizes three principles aimed at managing essential processing: the segmenting, pretraining,
and modality principles. The table specifies the number of experimental tests in which positive
results were obtained and provides the median effect size based on a meta-analysis by Mayer and
Pilegard (in press). These principles are intended to address the instructional problem of essential
overload, which can occur when a fast-paced multimedia lesson contains material that is complicated
for the learner. A learner experiences essential overload when the amount of essential cognitive
required to understand the multimedia instructional message exceeds the learner's cognitive capacity.