Expertise reversal effect in reading Chinese texts with added causal words

The study investigated the effectiveness of causal words embedded in Chinese texts to explicitly indicate causal links between the described events. Primary school students with different levels of reading expertise participated in the experiment that compared an embedded casual-words format with the original no-causal-words format. An interaction (expertise reversal) effect was obtained with the causal-words format benefiting novices but not more experienced readers. In contrast to previous studies of the expertise reversal effect that have related the effect to the variations in extraneous cognitive load caused by experts processing redundant for them information, this instance of the effect is likely to be due to differential levels of intrinsic cognitive load. The results of the reported experiment imply the use of different text formats for individuals with different levels of reading expertise.