Visual representations play a critical role in teaching physics. However, since we do not have a
satisfactory understanding of how visual perception impacts the construction of abstract knowledge,
most visual representations used in instructions are either created based on existing conventions or
designed according to the instructor’s intuition, which leads to a significant variance in their
effectiveness. In this paper we propose a cognitive mechanism based on grounded cognition, suggesting
that visual perception affects understanding by activating “perceptual symbols”: the basic cognitive unit
used by the brain to construct a concept. A good visual representation activates perceptual symbols that
are essential for the construction of the represented concept, whereas a bad representation does the
opposite. As a proof of concept, we conducted a clinical experiment in which participants received three
different versions of a multimedia tutorial teaching the integral expression of electric potential. The three
versions were only different by the details of the visual representation design, only one of which
contained perceptual features that activate perceptual symbols essential for constructing the idea of
“accumulation.” On a following post-test, participants receiving this version of tutorial significantly
outperformed those who received the other two versions of tutorials designed to mimic conventional
visual representations used in classrooms.