Young children's comprehension and recall of computer screen displayed text

In this study 26 third grade and 36 fifth grade students, experienced in computer-assisted instruction, were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions: computer screen displayed text or traditional printed page text. According to assigned treatment condition, subjects either read a story from the computer screen or printed page booklet. There were no statistically significant differences between the two treatment conditions on measures of reading comprehension. On the attitude survey subjects reported greater interest in the story when reading from the computer, however, they reported that the story was more difficult when reading from the computer screen. The results of the study suggest that extended reading of prose materials on computer screens is feasible for children as young as eight years of age.     

Film and text: Order effects in recall and social inferences

This article compares film and text with regard to effects produced by the order in which conflicting information is presented. Film is more influential and better recalled than conflicting text information, regardless of the order in which media appear. Conflicting paragraphs produce a primacy effect, whereas analogous film segments produce no order effect. Results are interpreted in terms of differences between visual and verbal encoding and between episodic and semantic memory.     

The influence of instruction on verbatim and content text recall

This investigation focuses on text recall in eight‐ and nine‐year old children. The main focus was on whether two different sets of instructions had a differential influence: one set instructed students to focus on an orally presented text verbatim, and the other instructed students to focus on its content. A differential influence on verbatim and content recall might indicate separate storage of verbatim and gist information, and could provide evidence for two subprocesses of text processing – that is, for construction and integration. The instructions were administered either before or after hearing the text, and recall was tested again one week later. The results showed differential instruction effects on verbatim and content recall. These effects depended on the time of instruction. Verbatim instruction had an enhancing effect on verbatim recall, both when instructions were given before and when given after text presentation. Content instruction given after text presentation had a suppressing effect on verbatim recall, but involved no advantage for content recall. Content recall was not suppressed by verbatim instruction at any time of instruction. Thus, the processing of content seems to be less situated than the processing of verbatim information.     

Thematic awareness and recall of information from text

In a repeated-measures experimental design,28 college students read and lateranswered questions about specific pieces ofinformation in 2 sets of 4 fictitiousbiographical passages that differed in terms ofthe presence of thematic connections (withtheme or without theme). As hypothesized, thestudents recalled more items from the theme setthan the non-theme set. The positive effect ofthematic connections was strongest for thestudents who exhibited some awareness of theme. In other words, the students who selected thetheme set as the easiest recalled more thanthose who chose the non-theme set as easiest. The students who picked the theme set aseasiest were also more accurate in theirprediction estimates of their theme set recall. Student explanations for why one story set waseasier than the other were predominantly Storyexplanations (referring to characteristics ofthe story) and Order explanations (referring tofactors influenced by set order). Studentsgave different explanations depending on whichstory set they picked as easiest. As expected,the students who picked the non-theme set aseasiest gave relatively few Story explanations. The students reported different patterns ofstrategy use depending upon whether or not theyswitched strategies for the different storysets.     

The effects of test expectations based upon goals on the free recall of learning from text

The number of facts college students correctly recalled was not affected by whether they were provided goals which did or did not encourage them to reorganize the passage material they studied. This held both for learners asked to recall all facts they could and those asked to recall only a portion of the goal-targeted facts. Learners whose recall exhibited reorganization of passage material did not differ in number of correctly recalled facts from those who failed to reorganize the passage material. Learners were more apt to reorganize the text materials when asked to recall only a portion of the goal-targeted facts than when asked to recall all facts they could. Self-report data suggest learners primarily use goals to rehearse the targeted material only after they carefully read a study passage.     

Chinese children's constructive activity and text comprehension

This study investigated how constructive activities are involved when Chinese students are performing reading tasks that require deeper levels of understanding. Forty students from Grade 5 (19 boys and 21 girls), and 42 students from Grade 6 (20 boys and 22 girls) participated in this study. To reveal the children's constructive processes in reading, they were asked to think aloud while responding to a text. Analyses of the children's protocols identified five levels of constructive activity. Analyses further indicated that the Grade 6 children performed better than the Grade 5 children, and skilled readers outperformed less skilled readers in higher levels of constructivist activity and text understanding tasks. Implications of the important roles of constructivist activity in children's learning from texts were discussed.     

The effects of a combination of text structure awareness and graphic postorganizers on recall and retention of science knowledge

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a self-regulated strategy on immediate recall and retention of science knowledge in community-college anatomy and physiology students who participated in a 14-hour (8 weeks) study skills class. The class emphasized the recognition of five common science textbook text structures (cause and effect, classification, enumeration, generalization, and sequence) and the construction of graphic postorganizers of the text structures. A pretest, two immediate posttests, and a retention posttest were used to measure recall and retention. Results indicated that on immediate posttests students who actively constructed graphic postorganizers of the test structure recalled significantly more content than did the control students who simply underlined, reread, or highlighted. On a 3-week retention posttest, those students in the study skills class retained significantly more of the material studied than did the control group of students.     

How geographic maps increase recall of instructional text

This article reviews research on how geographic maps influence the recall of associated text. Drawing on literature from cartography and educational, experimental, and cognitive psychology, the authors describe a model of map-text learning based on dual-coding theory and focused on activities that take place during working memory operations. The instructional implications of the model are explored, and recommendations for instructional applications are given.The authors wish to thank Jenine Doran, Kent Rittschof, Michael Verdi, and three anonymous reviewers for providing insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.     

Strategic and nonstrategic factors in gifted children's free recall

The present experiment contrasted the recall of gifted and nongifted middle-school children for sets of categorically related items. Subjects were given a single free-recall trial on each of two lists consisting of category-typical and category-atypical words. The typicality of the items for one list was based on each subject's unique typicality ratings, whereas the typicality of the items in the second list was based on adult norms. A preliminary category-rating task indicated that gifted students were somewhat more similar to adults in their ratings of category typicality than nongifted children. Recall was comparable between the gifted and nongifted subjects for typical items, but greater for the gifted subjects for atypical items. The latency between the recall of unrelated words was faster for the gifted than the nongifted children. Subjects were classified as strategic or nonstrategic on the basis of clustering and interitem latencies. Gifted subjects were less apt to be classified as strategic than nongifted subjects on the typical items of the self-generated list; there were no differences in the classification between the gifted and nongifted children for all other contrasts. These results were interpreted as indicating that the cognitive advantage of gifted relative to nongifted children is more apt to be in terms of nonstrategic rather than strategic functioning.     

The effects of adjunct questions in prose for deaf and hearing students at different reading levels.

In two studies, the author investigated interactions among adjunct question position, reading ability, and direct versus indirect learning outcomes for deaf postsecondary and hearing middle-school students. Adjunct questions were inserted immediately preceding or following brief sections of instructional prose for the purpose of focusing and cognitively activating the readers. Different effects were observed for deaf and hearing readers and for different levels of assessed reading ability. The findings are discussed in terms of reading ability, adjunct activities while reading prose, and direct versus indirect instructive effects.     

On inserting questions before or after segments of text

It has been concluded in all major reviews of adjunct question research that a group given questions after related text segments (postquestions) yields greater recall than a group given questions before related text segments (prequestions) or one not given any questions at all. However, closer examination of the earlier research and an analysis of recent research reveals that for certain types of verbatim questions and for certain high level questions, postquestions produce recall equivalent to or less than prequestions. Moreover, in many studies wherein postquestions exceed prequestions, the postquestion group equals the reading-only control group in recall of nonquestioned (incidental) material. Hence, despite frequent pronouncements to the contrary, no firm recommendation can be made regarding the optimal placement of adjunct questions in text material.     

Pictures and children’s story recall: Some questions of durability

It has been found that story-relevant pictures help children recall stories. But do those gains endure over time? Those of the second graders in this study did, over a 3-day period. Although they had more to forget, children aided by pictures did not forget more than those in a control group.     

The role of paraphrased adjunct questions in facilitating learning from prose

Twenty-six college student read a 5000-word prose passage and answered either verbatim or paraphrased inserted questions while reading about international communication. Students either were or were not permitted to review the text while answering the inserted questions. On a subsequent post-test containing new paraphrases of the adjunct questions, students who received paraphrased adjunct questions outperformed students who received verbatim adjunct questions. This result supported the contention that paraphrased adjunct questions could facilitate meaningful learning from prose.     

The knowledge base and text recall: Evidence from a short-term longitudinal study

In a short-term longitudinal study, we investigated how domain-specific knowledge in soccer influences the amount of text recall and comprehension in elementary school and junior high school children of high and low overall aptitudes. Both level of soccer knowledge and overall aptitude were varied in a factorial design. Third, fifth, and seventh grade children were given several measures of text recall and comprehension and were retested on these measures about 1 year later. Performance was more a function of soccer knowledge than of aptitude level.     

Patterns in children's ability to recall explicit,implicit and metaphorical information

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of grade level and recall task type on children's memory for explicit, implicit and metaphorical information following reading. Forty second and 40 fifth grade subjects balanced as to gender read four prose passages and were randomly assigned to cued and free recall conditions. A MANOVA produced significant main effects for grade level and task type on each of three dependent variables; EXPLICIT, IMPLICIT and METAPHOR recall measures. As predicted, fifth graders fared better than second graders and the cued condition exceeded free recall. Of greater significance was the finding that second graders were able to engage in metaphorical reasoning when the task was appropriately structured. The results suggest that providing externally generated, structured probes can greatly enhance children's reading recall at both grade levels and can enable children to demonstrate metaphorical comprehension prior to the age at which it spontaneously appears. In addition, significantly different patterns of recalled information were found within the two task conditions, patterns that remained stable across age groups.     

Assessment of answers to questions about a text and knowledge of cognitive processes

This study examines to what extent assessment of text comprehension involves knowledge of the properties of human cognition (theory of mind) and the social context of assessment. The subjects (N=332) were asked to read a text and then assess eight answers to questions about this text. The independent variables were the quality of the answers to requests for paraphrases, the quality of answers to direct questions about the meaning of the text, the order of the paragraphs in the text and the human vs. artificial source attributed to the answers. Results show that answers to requests for paraphrases were thought to be better when the source was artificial rather than human. Inversely, answers to direct questions about the meaning of the text were thought to be better when their source was human. The assessment of answers attributed to a human source were differentiated by a greater integration of contiguous assessments (contrast effect between contiguous assessments). This was noted more particularly for a person than for a machine, poor paraphrasing being followed by a better assessment of answers to questions about the meaning of the text. The assessment of human understanding of a text is hypothesised to be guided by an expectation of answer coherency and a wider and more structured knowledge than the assessment of artificial answers.     

The effects of headlines and summaries on news comprehension and recall

In two experiments, we attempted to analyze the effects of newspaper article headlines and summaries on final comprehension and recall. During the first experiment, the participants consisted of 117 high school students from the 9th grade, 68 from the 11th grade, 79 first year Psychology students from the Autonoma University of Madrid and 66 fifth year Journalism students from the Complutense University of Madrid. The subjects were randomly required to read a news report in one of the following experimental conditions: (1) the whole news article (headline, summary and text), (2) the headline and text, (3) the summary and text, and (4), the text only. The data from immediate and delayed free recall tasks were recorded. The results showed that the structure of the news article did not influence the recall and that there were differences among groups in the amount and quality of recall. The headline and the summary modified by the use of macrostructural criteria constituted additional elements introduced into the second experiment to provide a contrast with the original headline and summary. The results showed that an improvement in article recall did occur with the modified version in comparison with the original version. These two experiments have confirmed that the aims and criteria of journalists differ from those held by the authors of scientific texts and question whether the reading strategies applied are the same in both cases.     

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.