From the category archives:

Presentation research

New research shows that speaking can enhance your career

February 16, 2009

People perceive someone who speaks up as a competent leader – regardless of whether they actually are competent. That’s the finding of a fascinating research study that has just been reported online at Time. The research study 68 students were divided into teams of four. Each group was tasked with organizing an imaginary nonprofit environmental [...]

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New research: warning about story-telling

January 2, 2009

The guru of multimedia learning Richard Mayer has just published a new paper that all presenters should take note of. The paper is called “Increased interestingness of extraneous details in a multimedia science presentation leads to decreased learning”. The research Students received one of two PowerPoint presentations about how a cold virus infects the human [...]

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New scientific research on memory

December 16, 2008

I love having scientific back-up for the way we do things as presenters. So I subscribe to a number of cognitive science blogs to keep up-to-date. Here are two research studies on memory. The first one backs up what we already know – we’ve got a great memory for visual detail. And the second has [...]

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Are you stuck within the Overhead Projector Paradigm?

November 22, 2008

In the days of overhead projectors, we’d slide a piece of paper down the transparency to reveal information step-by-step. That’s the Overhead Projector Paradigm. When you’re stuck in this paradigm, you’re not using the full power of PowerPoint. What are the signs that you’re stuck in the Overhead Projector Paradigm? You bring on elements one-by-one [...]

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New scientific evidence for banning bullets from your PowerPoint slides

October 17, 2008

Many of us know intuitively that having lots of bullet-points on our slides isn’t effective. But it’s useful to have some scientific evidence to back up that intuition. New research on multitasking may provide that. In the research carried out at the University of Michigan and reported on the NPR website, subjects were asked to [...]

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Mice show that you can overcome fear of public speaking

October 15, 2008

If you get nervous about speaking in public, the recently published results from a scientific experiment on mice, should give you some hope. The experiment showed that mice that had been trained to feel calm, coped better with stressful situations. The mice were trained to associate a specific sound with safety. They were then subjected [...]

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Are our brains wired to enjoy stories?

August 2, 2008

Presentation experts extol the power of telling stories in presentations. A recent Scientific American “The Secrets of Storytelling” explores why stories are so powerful. It looks at three theories from the fascinating field of evolutionary psychology. Stories are simulations for real life Keith Oatley, is a professor of applied cognitive psychology and a novelist. So [...]

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The power of anecdotal evidence

July 26, 2008

In your business presentations, you may be tempted to stick to hard, proven facts and statistics to persuade your audience. But a powerful anecdote can trump objective facts. The power of the anecdote 1. Vaccinations and autism A recent Scientific American article by Michael Shermer “How Anecdotal Evidence can Undermine Scientific Results” discusses the medical [...]

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The three benefits of gesturing – it’s not what you think

June 20, 2008

Why is it, that when you’re speaking in front of a group you suddenly become aware of these great clumsy appendages at the end of your arms – your hands? Why do you suddenly wonder what to do about them? Gesturing is natural In normal one-to-one conversation you never think “What shall I do with [...]

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Make your pictures concrete too

May 18, 2008

The more concrete and specific you make your words, the more persuasive you will be to your audience. The same applies to the pictures you show. Recent research backs this up. Students were given short fictional news stories to read: One story claimed that watching TV was linked to maths ability, based on the fact [...]