Presents results of a study indicating that, over many propositions appearing in passages that vary widely in content and vocabulary difficulty, early and later propositions are better recalled, and that the rated importance of a proposition predicts probability of recall independent of serial position. (HTH)

One of the most consistent findings of research on discourse is that important text information is better learned than less important information because readers devote more attention to the important information. There is now very good reason to believe that questions cause readers to attend selectively to question-relevant information and that a…