This study investigated the effects of argument scaffolding and source credibility on science text comprehension. Eighty-seven college students were randomly assigned to an argument scaffolding activity, or no scaffolding, and read 2 science texts, attributed to a high- or a low-credibility source. The argument-scaffolding group recalled less…

A study of the capacity of first graders to use class-inclusion hierarchies for retrieving information. Subjects were asked to recall pictures of familiar objects when given five types of word cues. (JMB)

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)

Findings clearly demonstrate that interference theory can account for the forgetting of meaningfully-learned, connected discourse. (Authors)

The present study investigated why it is that the more concrete the subject noun phrase of a sentence, the more likely the predicate is to be recalled when the subject noun phrase is the cue. The findings were that concretization dramatically influences both the probability of recognition of the subject noun phrase and the probability of recall of…

This research investigates why it is that the more concrete the subject noun phrase of a sentence, the more likely the predicate is to be recalled when the subject noun phrase is the cue. (Editor/RK)

In two experiments a total of 662 high school students read a prose passage, took a verbatim or paraphrase quiz, and a week later completed a verbatim or paraphrase delayed test. Taking a quiz significantly enhanced performance on the delayed test. Performance was consistently much higher on the verbatim than on the paraphrase forms of quizzes and…

This study systematically analyzed social and cognitive processes that underlie the development of argumentative knowledge. Group discussions of controversial issues and explicit instruction in argumentation were expected to help students acquire a sense of the overall structure of an argument, or an argument schema. In a quasi-experiment, 128…

Three experiments investigated the hypothesis that, when interpreted in context, general terms are typically encoded on the basis of an instantiation. The results indicated that a particular term naming the expected instantiation of a general term was a better cue for the recall of a sentence than the general term itself, even though the general…

During research reported here, the author held a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship. (VM)

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…

College undergraduates read a story about two boys playing hooky from school from the perspective of either a burglar or a person interested in buying a home. After recalling the story once, subjects were directed to shift perspectives and then recall the story again. In two experiments, subjects produced on the second recall significantly more…

In two experiments, college students who supplied the last words of sentences they read learned more than subjects who simply read whole sentences. This facilitation was observed even with a list of sentences which were almost always completed with the wrong words. However, proactive interference attributable to acquisition errors appeared on…

Details two experiments that assessed the effect of vocabulary difficulty on three measures of text comprehension--free recall, summary recall, and sentence recognition. (FL)