Showing popular historical dramas in a classroom setting can be a double-edged sword when it comes to helping students learn and retain factual information found in textbooks, a new study finds.
“We found that when information in the film was consistent with information in the text, watching the film clips increased correct recall by about 50 percent relative to reading the text alone,” explains Andrew Butler, a psychology doctoral student at Washington University in St. Louis.
“In contrast, when information in the film directly contradicted the text, people often falsely recalled the misinformation portrayed in the film, sometimes as much as 50 percent of the time.”
