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.