Learning and remembering from thematic maps of familiar regions

To examine how four methods of symbolizing data affect learning from thematic maps of familiar regions, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, 86 college students viewed one of three types of thematic map or a control table, then read a map-related text. Recall of regions with their associated theme information was greater for those who studied a map than for those who studied a table. In Experiment 2, 83 college students viewed one of two types of thematic map for either 1 or 3 min, followed by a map-related text. Shaded-region, or choropleth maps were associated with greater recall of theme information, but longer exposure time was not. In both experiments, map-related text information was recalled more than map-unrelated text information. Choropleth maps and proportional symbol maps were associated with higher reported use of metacognitive strategies. Instructional and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.The authors thank Michael P. Verdi, Janet T. Johnson, and William A. Stock for their assistance with the study and their insightful comments on an early draft.     

L1 and L2 vocabulary glosses in L2 reading passages: Their effectiveness for increasing comprehension and vocabulary knowledge

This study investigated the effect of vocabulary glossing on recall and vocabulary learning, as well as learners’ preferences as to glossing. Eighty-five native speakers of English studying Spanish at the university level participated. Participants read a Spanish text under one of three treatment conditions: no gloss, English glosses, or Spanish glosses. They then were asked to write what they recalled of the passage, translate a list of the glossed vocabulary, and complete a questionnaire. The translation task was repeated four weeks later. Results showed that glossing did not significantly affect recall for the participants overall, but that those with higher than average proficiency recalled more if they had read a glossed version of the text. Those who had glosses outperformed their peers on the translation task administered immediately after they had read the text. However, this difference disappeared on the retest. Participants expressed preference for glosses, wished that they be located in the margin, and favoured Spanish glosses if they were comprehensible.     

Training Students to Use Maps to Increase Text Recall

In this study, high school students were trained to use adjunct maps strategically while studying a History text. Subjects were randomly assigned to either a control or map training group which read a lengthy passage which was accompanied by three maps. The control group was instructed to study the materials and write an essay about them. The map training group was instructed to study the materials and to place important event information from the text on their maps; they also discussed how their maps could be used to help them remember the text. One week later multiple choice, probed recall, free recall, and map recall tests were administered. Three weeks after training both groups read a transfer text and were instructed to use the attached map to help them remember the information. Free recalls were gathered after a short delay. Results showed that map training subjects obtained higher scores on all of the training text recall measures and on the main idea level transfer text measures. High ability map training subjects also recalled more details. Maps used in the transfer task showed trained subjects using the strategies they had been taught.     

Effects of Headings on Text Processing Strategies

This experiment addressed the question of how headings influence readers' memories for text content. College students read and recalled a 12-topic expository text. Half of the participants were trained to construct a mental outline of the text's topic structure as they read and then use their mental outlines to guide their recall attempts. The remaining participants did not receive such training. Half of the participants read a text containing headings before every subsection; the other half read the same text without headings. The results were that participants who received training and/or read the text with headings remembered text topics and their organization better than participants who received no training and read the text without headings. The results support the hypothesis that signals induce a change in readers' strategies for encoding and recalling text.     

The Effect of Animated Node-Link Displays on Information Recall

The attentional effects of animation on the processing of information from node-link maps and text were explored. The authors randomly assigned college students to receive a static node-link map presentation (n =40), an animated node-link map presentation (n =37), a static text presentation (n =29), or an animated text presentation (n =27). The participants were asked to recall the information 48 hr later. The participants recalled more main-idea information from animated node-link maps than from static maps or animated text. There were no differences with regard to presentation or display format on the recall of microstructural information.     

Map Perspective and the Learning of Text

In two studies, undergraduates learned a map of the city of Rome in either a flat survey map or a one-point perspective format. The perspective map lead to greater feature recall in the first study and to better memory for a related text when features were correctly located in the second study. Both studies suggest that map scanning patterns may differ depending on the learner′s point of view.     

Map Edges: Focal Points for Facilitating Text Recall

In two experiments undergraduate students were shown maps with features located either along an edge or within the interior of the map. Next, participants were asked to read a related text. Thereafter, they were asked to recall as much of the text information as possible and to reconstruct the map. In both experiments, the results consistently showed that students recall significantly more information when features are located along the edges of the maps. These findings will help give teachers and designers of classroom displays a better understanding of how to create maps that will facilitate the recall of related information. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

Is it the Earth that turns or the Sun that goes behind the mountains? Students’ misconceptions about the day/night cycle after reading a science text

ABSTRACT

The present research tested the hypothesis that the reading of science text can create new misconceptions in students with incongruent prior knowledge, and that these new misconceptions will be similar to the fragmented and synthetic conceptions obtained in prior developmental research. Ninety-nine third- and fifth-grade children read and recalled one of two texts that provided scientific or phenomenal explanations of the day/night cycle. All the participants gave explanations of the phenomenon in question prior to reading one of the texts and after they read it. The results showed that the participants who provided explanations of the day/night cycle at pretest incongruent with the scientific explanation recalled less information and generated more invalid inferences. An analysis of the participants’ posttest explanations indicated that these readers formed new misconceptions similar to the fragmented and synthetic conceptions obtained in developmental research. The implications of the above for text comprehension and science education research are discussed.     

Bilingual referents in cognitive processing

The study reported investigated whether using both of a bilingual's languages to process expository text enhanced or impaired comprehension. Eighty French-English bilinguals read a passage written in either French or English, took notes on the passage in either French or English, and completed tests of free recall and inference in French and English. Bilinguals who used both of their languages to read and take notes neither recognized nor recalled more information overall than their counterparts who read and took notes in the same language. Bilinguals who read and took notes in alternate languages, however, recalled more of those notes than subjects who read and took notes in the same language. Implications for future research pertaining to the interaction of bilinguals' languages during processing of text are discussed.     

Development of software to support argumentative reading and writing by means of creating a graphic organizer from an electronic text

This paper describes the development of a software program that supports argumentative reading and writing, especially for novice students. The software helps readers create a graphic organizer from the text as a knowledge map while they are reading and use their prior knowledge to build their own opinion as new information while they think about writing their essays. Readers using this software can read a text, underline important words or sentences, pick up and dynamically cite the underlined portions of the text onto a knowledge map as quotation nodes, illustrate a knowledge map by linking the nodes, and later write their opinion as an essay while viewing the knowledge map; thus, the software bridges argumentative reading and writing. Sixty-three freshman and sophomore students with no prior argumentative reading and writing education participated in a design case study to evaluate the software in classrooms. Thirty-four students were assigned to a class in which each student developed a knowledge map after underlining and/or highlighting a text with the software, while twenty-nine students were assigned to a class in which they simply wrote their essays after underlining and/or highlighting the text without creating knowledge maps. After receiving an instruction regarding a simplified Toulmin’s model followed by instructions for the software usage in argumentative reading and writing along with reading one training text, the students read the target text and developed their essays. The results revealed that students who drew a knowledge map based on the underlining and/or highlighting of the target text developed more argumentative essays than those who did not draw maps. Further analyses revealed that developing knowledge maps fostered an ability to capture the target text’s argument, and linking students’ ideas to the text’s argument directly on the knowledge map helped students develop more constructive essays. Accordingly, we discussed additional necessary scaffolds, such as automatic argument detection and collaborative learning functions, for improving the students’ use of appropriate reading and writing strategies.

     

Computerized Presentation of Text: Effects on Children’s Reading of Informational Material

This study examined whether children’s reading rate, comprehension, and recall are affected by computer presentation of text. Participants were 60 grade five students, who each read two expository texts, one in a traditional print format and the other from a computer monitor, which used a common scrolling text interface. After reading each text, participants were asked to recall as much as they could from what they had read and then answered questions that measured text recall and comprehension. Children took more time to read the passage and recalled more of the text material that they had read from the computer monitor. The benefit of computer presentation disappeared when efficiency variables, which take time into account, were examined. Children were, however, more efficient at comprehending text when reading from paper. The results suggest that children may take more time to read text on computer screens and that they are more efficient when reading text on paper.     

The use of adjunct displays to facilitate comprehension of causal relationships in expository text

We examined whether making cause and effect relationships explicit with an adjunct display improves different facets of text comprehension compared to a text only condition. In two experiments, participants read a text and then either studied a causal diagram, studied a list, or reread the text. In both experiments, readers who studied the adjunct displays better recalled the steps in the causal sequences, answered more problem-solving transfer items correctly, and answered more questions about transitive relationships between causes and effects correctly than those who reread the text. These findings supported the causal explication hypothesis, which states that adjunct displays improve comprehension of causal relationships by explicitly representing a text’s causal structure, which helps the reader better comprehend causal relationships.     

Evaluating the effects of analogy enriched text on the learning of science: The importance of learning indexes

Research has shown that differences in the prior knowledge of the participants and in the learning indexes adopted can explain why some studies show positive learning effects of analogy enriched text while others do not. In the present studies, these two factors were combined into one through the construction of a learning index that measured incremental positive changes in the participants' prior knowledge after reading an analogy enriched or no analogy text. A second learning index was also used to evaluate whether the participants created well-formed conceptual models after reading the science text. These learning indexes were used in two studies in which the effects of analogy enriched versus no analogy text were compared on the learning of the scientific explanations of the day/night cycle and of the seasons. The participants were 3rd and 5th graders in the first study and 6th graders and college students in the other. Although only few of the participants learned the correct scientific explanation, those who read the analogy enriched text produced more incremental positive changes in their pretest explanations at posttest and delayed test and created more well-formed conceptual models close to the scientific one than those who read the no analogy text. They also recalled more information and created fewer invalid inferences in their recalls. The results indicate that analogies can be used without reservation to facilitate the learning of science and have broader implications about how to evaluate the learning of science in general.     

The Effects of Relevance Instructions and Verbal Ability on Text Processing

The authors examined whether relevance instructions compensate for differences in verbal ability on measures of reading time, text recall, and sentence recognition. College students (n = 81) with higher and lower verbal ability were assigned randomly to 1 of 2 relevance-instruction conditions before reading a text. They asked participants in each condition to focus on different categories of information within the same text. Relevant information took longer to read and was recalled and recognized better than nonrelevant information. Readers with higher verbal ability read faster and recalled and recognized more information correctly than did those readers with lower verbal ability. Results support the noncompensatory hypothesis, which states that relevance instructions and verbal ability make independent contributions to resource allocation and learning. Readers with lower verbal ability may need additional support even when given prereading relevance instructions.     

Epistemic Perspective and Online Epistemic Processing of Evidence: Developmental and Domain Differences

Relations between epistemic perspective and online epistemic processing of evidence when reading a text were examined. Thirty-seven young adolescents and 24 graduate university students were asked to read and think aloud with two texts, one in the history domain and the other in the science domain. Participants also completed a prior-knowledge test and an instrument assessing their epistemic perspective. Results showed that participants who exhibited an evaluativist epistemic perspective and high prior knowledge used the epistemic standard of scientific research more than participants who held a nonevaluativist epistemic perspective. Furthermore, an age-related developmental difference was observed, with adults using the epistemic standard of scientific research more than young adolescents. Domain differences were observed in both participants’ epistemic perspectives and online epistemic processing. Participants overall engaged in online epistemic processing of evidence more in the history topic than in the science topic.     

Computer game play as an imaginary stage for reading: implicit spatial effects of computer games embedded in hard copy books

This study compared books with embedded computer games (via pentop computers with microdot paper and audio feedback) with regular books with maps, in terms of fifth graders' comprehension and retention of spatial details from stories. One group read a story in hard copy with embedded computer games, the other group read it in regular book format with a map. Students received no reading directions, or notification of upcoming post‐tests. Dependent measures included a post‐test of spatial questions about the story. Some questions addressed story items in both text and games. Other questions addressed spatial items in the text, but not in games. Participants who read books with embedded games scored significantly higher on all the post‐test questions, including spatial questions not addressed in games. This suggests that game play helped readers to create a mental model of the story setting, used in subsequent reading to visualise spatial propositions.     

Text memory: Recalling Twice,using different perspectives

Three hundred College students read a 760 word text under one of two instructed perspectives. After full recall, an additional recall (squeeze) was requested under either the same (unchanged) or the alternative perspective. The first recall confirmed earlier results: a strong bias towards perspective related ideas. The second recall yielded substantial additional material. It was expecially effective in recalling alternative perspective related ideas and this most markedly so if the instructions were to recall using the alternative perspective. These results confirm and complement the results of Anderson & Pichert (1978) in so far as it is both the chance of a second recall as well as the change in perspective that raises the amount of recalled material.     

When tactics collide: Counter effects between an adjunct map and prequestions

Eighty-five undergraduates read a 1,399-word story using computer programs that differed in the types of learning aids provided: either prequestions only (PO) viewed prior to the reading, a related map that was first reviewed feature by feature (MR), prequestions plus an unreviewed map (PM), or prequestions with a reviewed map (PMR). During reading, subjects accessed the map as desired by depressing the mouse button, at which time the computer recorded how often they viewed the display and for how long. Analyses of scores on a 20-item constructed-response test on the story showed significantly higher recall by PO and PM groups compared to subjects receiving only a map. The MR group accessed the map significantly more often than did the PM group, while subjects given a reviewed map (MR and PMR groups) rated it significantly more useful for learning the story than did those who received both prequestions and a map that was not reviewed. All three groups receiving prequestions rated the text itself more useful than did the map-only group. These findings provide partial evidence that graphic and verbally based instructional tactics can, in certain circumstances, “collide” with one another when used concurrently. Because both adjunct displays and adjunct questions rely on mental rehearsal during initial processing, they potentially compete for the limited resources of working memory leading to, in some cases, attenuation of their benefits during learning.