"Eyetrack" study of the effectiveness of multimedia learning

What do people *really* look at on a web page?  Do multimedia, graphics, and audio really help deliver a message?  Does design matter?

All these questions and more are addressed by the new study published by the Poynter Institute.  The Eyetrack III  report covers "Online news consumer behavior in the age of multimedia".  These folks looked at how people read dozens of news site web pages and learned some things that won't surprise us and some that will, such as:

• ads that appear at the bottom of a page or far to the right margin don't get looked at
• ...that multiple, potentially conflicting streams of information (graphic, audio, and text) might impede some types of recall rather than help it...
• that underlining a headline duscouraged people from reading the text blurb below it.  The underline serves as a visual break that stops the eye. 
  
• brief paragraphs that contain only one or two sentences get seen and read more
• smaller text encouarages reading rather than scanning of pages
• users recall specific factual information better when they read it in text, but they understand concepts and processes better when they see it in an illustration or animation
  

It's not a comprehensive, controlled study of a large population, but it's some very interesting reading for folks who create web and multimedia sites.