The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate how relevance instructions influence readers' personal reading intentions, reading goals, text processing, and memory for text. Undergraduates (n = 52) were randomly assigned to one of three pre-reading relevance instruction conditions that asked them to read from a perspective or to read…

While multitasking is not a new concept, it has received increasing attention in recent years with the development of new media and technologies. Recent trends appear to suggest that multitasking is on the rise among the younger generation. The purpose of the study is to determine if students obtain more or less information in multitasking…

College students were given a topically relevant or irrelevant outline and asked to generate propositions about the topics by drawing on existing knowledge prior to studying an instructional text. Results of conceptual clustering analyses suggest that organization was one of the mechanisms by which topical outlines increased meaningful text…

Reports a study to test the hypothesis that processing a story from a given perspective creates two memory representations: an overall representation of the story as a whole and a more enduring schematic trace containing only perspective-consistent information. Results did not show evidence of schematic dominance. (JAD)

The "levels effect," the finding that the more central to the meaning of a passage an idea is the more likely that idea is to be retained, does not seem to hold for immediate recognition. Therefore, a study was conducted to test a model of information storage that predicted that when surface structure information was preserved in its…

Investigates whether individual differences in working-memory (WM) capacity are related to the ways readers use inferences to facilitate text comprehension. Finds several differences between low-memory-span and high-memory-span readers. Notes that readers with adequate WM capacity can keep interpretations open ended and await more information from…

A series of experimental and theoretical investigations of text inference were conducted. One applied a theory of inferable text cohesion to the devising of text structure revisions that assist comprehension and memory. Since only modest success was achieved, the next three projects went beyond text revision to the use of adjunct outlines,…

Whether preview and recall sentences affected readers' memory of text material in separate chapters was studied in seven experiments using a total of 130 undergraduate students. Hypotheses for the causes of the beneficial effects of preview signals and recall sentences on memory are postulated. (SLD)

The purpose of this study was to systematically investigate the effects of various orienting tasks on the recall of prose material. In particular, subjects were asked to read a prose passage while performing either a semantic (outlining the material) or a nonsemantic (circling e's) orienting task under either incidental or intentional recall…

Supports the developmental gradient-shift explanation for differences between the reading performance of children and college students. (HOD)

Attempts to unify two major approaches to the study of text comprehension into a process model of causal reasoning which explains how readers discover the causal structure of a complicated text. Presents empirical evidence to support the model. (RS)

Uses W. Kintsch's Construction Integration model as a framework to explore the effects of preexisting attitudes on memory for texts. Shows that preexisting attitudes interacted with attitude texts over delay although not in a direct or expected fashion. Emphasizes the need to manipulate representational levels of attitude texts and to consider…

Two experiments investigated to what extent schema activation is involved in any facilitative effect that headings may have on multiple-choice test performance following the reading of a passage. In the first experiment, 1,116 college students read a 1,760-word passage on human sexuality with headings either present or absent. An analysis of the…

A study tested the theory that an item that stands out from its background is better remembered than one that is similar to the background (the isolation effect). Specifically, the study examined whether the isolation effect would be greater when there was a larger and more confusing mass of background items, whether position of the isolated item…

A study tested the assumption found in schema theory that scripted knowledge automatically provides specific content details about scripted activity, thereby biasing a reader's immediate interpretation of a text. The study measured how quickly and accurately 16 college students could verify script related words. Subjects listened to four scripted…