Is there any research about the efficacy of illustration and example placement in procedure writing?

In writing procedural documentation, I have the choice of writing the complete step-by-step instructions with references to an appendix of illustrations,

For instance:

1. Do task 1 (see Fig. 1)
2. Do task 2 (see Fig. 2)

Illustrations
-------------
+-------+
| Fig 1 |
+-------+
+-------+
| Fig 2 |
+-------+

or to accompany each step with an illustration, almost as if the steps were the captions to the illustrations,

For instance:

+-------+
| Fig 1 |
+-------+
1. Do Task 1.

+-------+
| Fig 2 |
+-------+
2. Do Task 2.

Is there any research to show which method is more effective for the person attempting to learn the material? What are some of the considerations I need to make in choosing one method over the other?

If it makes any difference, each document is 10-15 pages long, about 25% of which is text and 75% is illustration.

posted about 9 years ago

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dwwilson66‭

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