Visual offline and online communication: perception in contemporary educational discourse

The article considers the functioning of visual images in mass communication, which has become a didactic tool in the educational sphere. The purpose of the article is to study the influence of the visual realistic representation of the main and peripheral information of a popular science text on its perception. As the visual presentation of information is getting more widespread and intensive, the relevance of studying the properties of visual images, such as their density and complex interweaving, transnational character, instantaneity and non-reflexivity of their perception, immanent polysemy and ambivalence is becoming most significant. Instant offline/online switching forms a model of a new daily routine including a visual code influencing everyday life of a person. The main functions of visual images are organizing communication, visualizing information and generating new meanings. The presence of two hypostases - discrete (semiotic) and continual (semantic), mutually expressing each other - is the starting point of an intellectual breakthrough due to the appeal to the divergence of thinking. Visual images in a communicative message are often combined with a verbal text, forming creolized texts. So this double coding of information improves its perception and memorization. The material of the study was a popular science text, experimental (question-answer), comparative and statistical methods being used. The article presents the results of an experimental study identifying the impact of visual images of an illustration on the assimilation and memorization of verbal information. The influence of visual realistic representation of the main and peripheral information of the popular science text on its perception was studied. The results suggest that in most cases the visual representation of information improves its perception and helps to get the gist of the verbal text. Figurative pictorial representation of information does not improve the perception and memorization of structural phenomena, for example, classification by various parameters. It was concluded that the use of creolized texts for didactic purposes reduces potential perceptual barriers leading to inadequate understanding and increases the motivation of learning.