The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of advance organizers and audio narrations used to complement animated instruction on tests measuring different educational objectives. One hundred forty-one participants were randomly assigned to five treatment groups, received their respective instructional presentation and completed four criterion measures. No statistically significant differences in achievement were found among the five treatment groups on each of the criterion measures indicating that the type of cognitive strategies employed to complement animation did not instigate deeper levels of information processing and were not effective in facilitating higher order learning outcomes. These results raised concerns about the usefulness of prior research related to advance organizers and audio narrations when the objective is to complement animated instruction to facilitate higher order learning objectives.