The influence of list format and category headers on age differences in understanding medication instructions

We examined whether instructions are better understood and remembered when they contain organizational cues. Our previous research found that older and younger adults organize medication information in similar ways, suggesting that they have a schema for taking medication. In the present study, list formats (vs. paragraphs) emphasized the order of information and category headers emphasized the grouping of information specified by this schema. Experiment 1 examined whether list and header cues improve comprehension (answer time and accuracy) and recall for adults varying in age and working memory capacity (measured by a sentence span task). List instructions were better understood and recalled than paragraphs, and reduced age differences in answer time and span differences in accuracy. Headers reduced paragraph comprehension for participants with lower levels of working memory capacity, presumably because they were not salient cues in the paragraphs. Experiment 2 investigated if headers were more effective when more saliently placed in paragraphs and lists, and if list and header cues helped readers draw inferences from the instructions. List formats again reduced age differences in comprehension, especially reducing the time needed to draw inferences about the medication. While headers did not impair comprehension, these cues did impair recall. The present study suggests that list-organized instructions provide an environmental support that improves both older and younger adult comprehension and recall of medication information.     

Spatial-Semantic Display Processing: The Role of Spatial Structure on Recall

The purpose of the present study was to test a model of spatial-semantic display processing by comparing the aided and unaided recall of information presented in a node-link format (knowledge map) to the aided and unaided recall of information presented in a text format. Structural icons of the knowledge map and text with the verbiage removed were used to aid retrieval in some conditions. Participants were randomly assigned to one of eight groups formed by the complete crossing of three factors: knowledge map versus text, structural icon at recall versus no structural icon at recall, and immediate versus delayed recall. Knowledge map groups outperformed text groups on essay tests and they more accurately remembered where information was located within the materials. Both knowledge map and text icon-aided recall groups had significantly better performance than the no icon, unaided recall groups (particularly on main ideas).     

Effect of organizational cues and strategies on good and poor comprehenders' story understanding.

In two experiments, we investigated the influence of organizational cues on story comprehension by 7- to 8-year-old children, matched in age and decoding skills but differing in comprehension ability. In Experiment 1, children read abstract stories with titles and pictures that did or did not integrate story information. Providing integrative cues improved comprehension by poor, but not good comprehenders, but had no effect on verbatim recall. Both skill groups recalled more main ideas than subsidiary ones. In Experiment 2, two new groups read the stories without pictures or titles. Poor comprehenders trained to look for "clue words" to infer main story consequences, implicit in the stories, showed better comprehension than such children given no training. Good comprehenders performed at a uniformly high level regardless of training. The results are discussed in terms of cognitive control required to select and coordinate information in text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accessing Distant Premise Information: How Memory Feeds Reasoning.

According to current psychological models of deduction, people can draw inferences on the basis of information that they receive from different sources at different times. In 3 reading-comprehension experiments, the authors demonstrated that premises that appear far apart in a text (distant) are not accessed and are therefore not used as a basis for logical inferences (Experiment 1), unless the premises are reinstated by a contextual cue (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the authors investigated whether these deductions are then integrated into the reader's situation model of the text. The results are interpreted in terms of a collaboration between memory-based text processing and higher level schema-driven logical reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teaching readers about the structure of scientific text.

Adults may have difficulty in reading and retaining scientific text because they are unaware of the text's top-level structure. Experiment 1 revealed that college students had difficulty in sorting passages into categories on the basis of text structures, such as generalization, enumeration, sequence, classification, and compare/contrast. In Experiment 2, junior college chemistry students either received approximately 8 hr of training in how to discriminate among and use text structures found in their chemistry textbook (trained group) or engaged in unrelated activities (control group). All students took matched pretests and posttests in which they read biology passages and then freely recalled the passages and answered comprehension questions. On the recall test, the trained group showed a substantial pretest-to-posttest gain in recall of high conceptual information but not in recall of low conceptual information, whereas the control group showed no substantial gains. On the comprehension test, the trained group showed a substantial pretest-to-posttest gain in answering application questions and a lesser gain in answering literal questions, whereas the control group showed no substantial gains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of perspective in the accessibility of goals during reading.

An implicit assumption of several causal reasoning models is that readers adopt the goals of a narrative's protagonist during text comprehension. In apparent violation of this assumption, readers participating in Experiment 1 of the present study drew inferences relevant to a protagonist's goal even when that goal was already satisfied from the perspective of the protagonist. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants were explicitly asked to view the text situation from the point of view of the protagonist. In this case, the goals of the reader and the protagonist should be the same. In these experiments, participants focused on the goals of the protagonist only when those goals had not been satisfied from the perspective of the protagonist. These results are discussed in terms of reader- and character-based perspectives and in terms of text characteristics that cue perspective taking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working memory and individual differences in comprehension and memory of text.

Attempted to determine whether working memory processes measured by the Reading Span Test would be strongly associated with the ability to integrate information from different parts of a passage to infer an idea not explicitly stated in the passage. The study also assessed the influence of working memory processes on ability to encode explicitly stated and inferred information into long-term memory. 29 undergraduates were administered a letter span test and a reading span test. The ability to store and process information in working memory was shown to be positively related to (a) scores on a standardized reading comprehension test, (b) long-term memory encoding and retrieval of explicitly stated text information, and (c) integration of text information for the purpose of drawing inferences. Variations in only the storage capacity of working memory were not related to these measures. It is concluded that the ability to coordinate storage and process functions in working memory may be an important determinant of text processing skill, especially with respect to encoding information into long-term memory. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Searching for signs, symbols, and icons: Effects of time of day, visual complexity, and grouping.

Searching for icons, symbols, or signs is an integral part of tasks involving computer or radar displays, head-up displays in aircraft, or attending to road traffic signs. Icons therefore need to be designed to optimize search times, taking into account the factors likely to slow down visual search. Three factors likely to adversely affect visual search were examined: the time of day at which search was carried out, the visual complexity of the icons, and the extent to which information features in the icon were grouped together. The speed with which participants searched icon arrays for a target was slower early in the afternoon, when icons were visually complex and when information features in icons were not grouped together to form a single object. Theories of attention that account for both feature-based and object-based search best explain these findings and are used to form the basis for ways of improving icon design. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of number of items on the pigeon's discrimination of same from different visual displays.

The pigeon's discrimination of visual displays comprising from 2 to 16 computer icons that were either the same as or different from one another was studied. Discrimination of Same from Different displays improved when the displays contained more icons, both after training with just 16-icon displays (Experiment 1) and after training with 2-, 4-, 8-, 12-, and 16-icon displays (Experiment 2). That improvement was specific to displays of different icons; accuracy to displays of same icons did not differ as a function of icon number. These results were well described by the degree of variability or entropy in multielement visual displays. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of age, illustrations, and task variables on the performance of procedural assembly tasks.

Older adults may be disadvantaged in the performance of procedural assembly tasks because of age-related declines in working memory operations. It was hypothesized that adding illustrations to instructional text may lessen age-related performance differences by minimizing processing demands on working memory in the elderly. In the present study, younger and older adults constructed a series of 3-dimensional objects from 3 types of instructions (text only, illustration only, or text and illustrations). Results indicated that instructions consisting of text and illustrations reduced errors in construction for both age groups compared with the other formats. Younger adults, however, outperformed older adults under all instructional format conditions. Measures of spatial and verbal working memory and text comprehension ability accounted for substantial age-related variance across the different format conditions but did not fully account for the age differences observed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effect of Relevance Instructions on Reading Time and Learning.

The authors examined the effect of prereading relevance instructions on reading time and learning for 2 types of text. Experiment 1 found that relevance instructions increased learning for relevant segments without increasing reading time when reading a scientific text sentence by sentence on a computer. In contrast, the same segments were learned less well and took longer to read when nonrelevant. Experiment 2 replicated the findings when individuals read an informational narrative text. These findings supported the no increased effort hypothesis, which states that relevant information is learned better without additional effort when readers are told what is relevant prior to reading. In contrast, nonrelevant information is learned less well. The authors attribute these effects to the goal-focusing nature of relevance instructions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 50(2) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2008-10962-001). There are errors in the labeling of Figure 1 on p. 244. The ordinate percentages should be three times greater than indicated. In addition, the algebraic formula in the note for Table 2 on p. 245 is incorrect. The correct ordinate percentages and the correct algebraic formula are provided in the erratum.] Adapted E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson's (see record 2005-09647-002) encoding specificity paradigm for 2 recall experiments with 153 undergraduates to investigate whether Ss would make trait inferences without intentions or instructions at the encoding stage of processing behavioral information. Under memory instructions only, Ss read sentences describing people performing actions that implied traits. Later, Ss recalled each sentence under 1 of 3 cuing conditions: a dispositional cue (e.g., generous); a strong, nondispositional semantic associate to an important sentence word; or no cue. Results show that recall was best when cued by the disposition words. Ss were unaware of having made trait inferences. Interpreted in terms of encoding specificity, findings indicate that Ss unintentionally made trait inferences at encoding. It is suggested that attributions are made spontaneously, as part of the routine comprehension of social events. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Narrative comprehension in Alzheimer's disease: Assessing inferences and memory operations with a think-aloud procedure.

Objective: To further understanding of text comprehension abilities in Alzheimer's disease (AD), a think-aloud protocol was used to examine the role of inferencing and the memory operations used to produce inferences. Method: Twenty participants with AD and 20 cognitively healthy older adults (OA) read narratives, pausing to talk aloud after each sentence. A verbal protocol analysis developed by Trabasso and Magliano (1996a) was used to code participants' utterances into inferential and noninferential clause types; inferential statements were then coded to identify the memory operation used in their generation. Results: Compared with OA controls, the AD participants showed poorer story comprehension, d = 2.0, produced fewer inferences, d = .67, and were less skilled at providing explanations of story events, d = 1.27, and in using prior text information to explain outcomes, d = .90. The AD group also appeared to rely more on the activation of world knowledge, d = .58, which contributed to less effective inferences and produced more incoherent noninferential statements, d = 1.05. Poorer text comprehension for the AD group was associated with poorer verbal memory abilities, r's > .55, and poorer use of prior text events when producing explanatory inferences, r = .42. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the memory difficulties of the AD group appear to be an important cognitive factor interfering with their ability to integrate story events through the use of inferences and to create a global coherence to support text comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Viewing instructions impact emotional memory differently in older and young adults.

The current study examines how the instructions given during picture viewing impact age differences in incidental emotional memory. Previous research has suggested that older adults' memory may be better when they make emotional rather than perceptual evaluations of stimuli and that their memory may show a positivity bias in tasks with open-ended viewing instructions. Across two experiments, participants viewing photographs either received open-ended instructions or were asked to make emotionally focused (Experiment 1) or perceptually focused (Experiment 2) evaluations. Emotional evaluations had no impact on older adults' memory, whereas perceptual evaluations reduced older adults' recall of emotional, but not of neutral, pictures. Evidence for the positivity effect was sporadic and was not easier to detect with open-ended viewing instructions. These results suggest that older adults' memory is best when the material to be remembered is emotionally evocative and they are allowed to process it as such. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements of young and older adults while reading with distraction.

The authors used eye-tracking technology to examine young and older adults' online performance in the reading in distraction paradigm. Participants read target sentences and answered comprehension questions following each sentence. In some sentences, single-word distracters were presented in either italic or red font. Distracters could be related or unrelated to the target text. Online measures, including probability of fixation, fixation duration, and number of fixations to distracting text, revealed no age differences in text processing. However, young adults did have an advantage over older adults in overall reading time and text comprehension. These results provide no support for an inhibition deficit account of age differences in the reading in distraction paradigm, but are consistent with J. Dywan and W. E. Murphy's (1996) suggestion that older adults are less able than the young to distinguish target and distracter information held in working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences": Correction to Winter and Uleman.

Reports an error in "When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences" by Laraine Winter and James S. Uleman (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1984[Aug], Vol 47[2], 237-252). There are errors in the labeling of Figure 1 on p. 244. The ordinate percentages should be three times greater than indicated. In addition, the algebraic formula in the note for Table 2 on p. 245 is incorrect. The correct ordinate percentages and the correct algebraic formula are provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1985-01259-001.) Adapted E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson's (see record 2005-09647-002) encoding specificity paradigm for 2 recall experiments with 153 undergraduates to investigate whether Ss would make trait inferences without intentions or instructions at the encoding stage of processing behavioral information. Under memory instructions only, Ss read sentences describing people performing actions that implied traits. Later, Ss recalled each sentence under 1 of 3 cuing conditions: a dispositional cue (e.g., generous); a strong, nondispositional semantic associate to an important sentence word; or no cue. Results show that recall was best when cued by the disposition words. Ss were unaware of having made trait inferences. Interpreted in terms of encoding specificity, findings indicate that Ss unintentionally made trait inferences at encoding. It is suggested that attributions are made spontaneously, as part of the routine comprehension of social events. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constraining factors in calibration of comprehension.

Two experiments were conducted to examine the factors leading to poor calibration of comprehension. In Experiment 1, the basic finding of poor calibration was replicated with paragraphs from which a single inference verification was the test of comprehension. It was shown that this lack of calibration could not be attributed to subjects' answering the inferences on the basis of previous world knowledge. Experiment 2 demonstrated that previous studies which assess comprehension with a single inference per text seriously underestimate the level of calibration. As the number of test items per text increases, so does the level of calibration. Finally, mathematical simulations demonstrate that even when the underlying calibration curves are identical, simply adding items to the comprehension test will produce a higher and more reliable estimate of calibration of comprehension. Reanalysis of these data shows that this effect is a formal property of the measures and not simply a psychological testing effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How prior knowledge, WMC, and relevance of information affect eye fixations in expository text.

This study examined how prior knowledge and working memory capacity (WMC) influence the effect of a reading perspective on online text processing. In Experiment 1, 47 participants read and recalled 2 texts of different familiarity from a given perspective while their eye movements were recorded. The participants' WMC was assessed with the reading span test. The results suggest that if the reader has prior knowledge related to text contents and a high WMC, relevant text information can be encoded into memory without extra processing time. In Experiment 2, baseline processing times showed whether readers slow down their processing of relevant information or read faster through the irrelevant information. The results are discussed in the light of different working memory theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning from text with diagrams: Promoting mental model development and inference generation.

Two experiments investigated learning outcomes and comprehension processes when students learned about the heart and circulatory system using (a) text only, (b) text with simplified diagrams designed to highlight important structural relations, or (c) text with more detailed diagrams reflecting a more accurate representation. Experiment 1 found that both types of diagrams supported mental model development, but simplified diagrams best supported factual learning. Experiment 2 replicated learning effects from Experiment 1 and tested the influence of diagrams on novices' comprehension processes. Protocol analyses indicated that both types of diagrams supported inference generation and reduced comprehension errors, but simplified diagrams most strongly supported information integration during learning. Visual representations appear to be most effective when they are designed to support the cognitive processes necessary for deep comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)