Comparing the reading-storage test to the paraphrase test as measures of the primary effect of prose reading.

Compared reading-storage tests to paraphrase tests to determine the sensitivity of each to the gain in comprehension that results from reading prose. In Exp I, 48 college students were presented tests on 8 passages at 4 levels of difficulty under reading and nonreading conditions. In Exp II, 40 college students were presented tests on 5 passages with the amount of information in the passages systematically manipulated using a word deletion scheme. The reading-storage tests were, on the average, less sensitive to gain than the paraphrase tests, but gain on the paraphrase tests was more variable. The reading-storage test is a completely objective technique which appears to be about as sensitive to comprehension gain as is the subjectively developed paraphrase type of test. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation of metaphoric processing to comprehension and memory.

Investigated whether metaphors help or hinder prose comprehension using context-dependent metaphoric sentences or literally equivalent paraphrases as concluding statements for short didactic passages. 71 undergraduates read 8 short passages and rated the quality and effectiveness of the writing. Orienting instructions and the rating task established an incidental-learning set for the Ss. Half of the Ss read stories with literally equivalent statements replacing the metaphors. After completing the reading, they were given either an immediate or delayed cued recall test. Analysis of the gist scoring of Ss' recall protocols indicated increased memorability for passages with metaphoric conclusions. Not only were the concluding metaphors themselves recalled better than equivalent literal sentences, but there was also an increase in memory for the preceding context. Both initial processing and retrieval explanations of the results are discussed along with limitations related to the use of metaphors in text. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recall of thematically relevant material by adolescent good and poor readers as a function of written versus oral presentation.

36 7th grade good and poor readers read one prose passage and listened to a 2nd one. They were tested, following each passage, for comprehension and recall of that passage. Under both reading and listening conditions, good readers recalled a greater proportion of the stories, and the likelihood of their recalling a particular unit was a clear function of the units's structural importance; poor readers recalled less of the stories, and their recall protocols were not as clearly related to variations in structural importance. Performance following reading was significantly correlated with performance following listening. Results indicate that poor readers suffer from a general comprehension deficit and that similar processes are involved in reading and listening comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metacognitive differences between skilled and less skilled readers: Remediating deficits through story grammar and attribution training.

Designed a metacognitive intervention program to remediate the failures of 42 4th-grade boys in using metacognitive skills to aid their reading comprehension. The program consisted of 2 components: story grammar training, designed to increase comprehension monitoring; and attribution training, designed to increase awareness of effort in efficient reading. Ss were assigned to 3 groups: 1 group received both components and the other 2 groups each received one component alone. 14 skilled 4th-grade male readers served as a contrast group. Maintenance was assessed through free and probed recall; generalization was assessed through a metareading test and an error detection and correction task. Results indicate that strategy training produced dramatic gains in comprehension. Only Ss receiving attribution training alone showed poorer performance than skilled readers. Partial support was obtained for generalization on the metareading assessment. It is concluded that strategy training improved poor readers' comprehension by providing them with metacognitive skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive capacity engagement during and following interspersed mathemagenic questions.

Investigated the effects of 2 types of interspersed "mathemagenic" postquestions (superordinate and subordinate) on cognitive capacity engagement during reading and subsequent performance on a recall posttest, using the secondary task paradigm. (Mathemagenic influence refers to the generally facilitative effect of postquestions on learning.) 120 undergraduates served in 1 of 4 conditions by reading the prose passages developed by R. Bruning (1968): mathemagenic questions only, secondary task only, mathemagenic questions and secondary task, or neither. Interspersed, superordinate postquestions were associated with higher levels of cognitive capacity engagement than subordinate postquestions both during the processing of the question and during subsequent reading. On a cued recall achievement test, more main ideas were recalled than details, and the group that received neither secondary task probes nor questions performed more poorly than the other groups on both types of questions. An effect of the secondary task probe itself, especially on recall of main ideas, is interpreted as a task-demand component of the orienting response. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehension calibration and recall prediction accuracy of texts: Reading skill, reading strategies, and effort.

High school students at 3 levels of verbal skill rated their own recall (prediction accuracy) and comprehension (calibration accuracy) of 3 expository texts accompanied by 3 different sets of instructions. All sets of instructions emphasized reading for understanding, and two of them also involved key words (given or personally selected), which were to be used during study. Students assessed which instructions they preferred and estimated their general verbal and memory skills. Three major results were obtained (a) Students seemed to assess their general verbal and memory skills quite well. (b) Acceptable levels of comprehension calibration and recall prediction accuracy were found. Verbal-skill differences were found for recall prediction accuracy but not for comprehension calibration accuracy. (c) students had study preferences—the most preferred way to study increased performance but reduced prediction accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of enactment in implicit and explicit memory

Enactment during the encoding of simple imperatives has been found to improve substantially performance on conceptually driven explicit-memory tests. In two experiments the effect of this manipulation on a conceptually driven implicit test (category association) was studied. A conceptually driven explicit test (free recall) was also included. In Experiment one three different study conditions (enactment with real objects, reading, and generation) were considered. In Experiment two there were two study conditions (enactment with imaginary objects and reading). Compared to reading, generation was found to improve the performance on both free recall and category association, whereas enactment affected free recall only. In a final experiment subjects imagined that they performed the tasks, and this manipulation was found to improve the memory performance on both tests. Taken together, this pattern of results is interpreted as suggesting that free recall and category association have a process in common that is sensitive to semantic processing at study (promoted by generation and imagery, but not by enactment), and that free recall involves a retrieval process in addition that is facilitated by a rich encoding environment (provided by enactment).     

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.     

A new tool for measuring and understanding individual differences in the component processes of reading comprehension.

We propose a new measure of individual differences in reading comprehension ability that is theoretically motivated, is easy to administer, and that has high predictive power. Participants read 3-sentence paragraphs that describe the relations among a set of real and artificial terms, and then they respond to true–false statements that assess their ability to access and integrate long-term memory knowledge with text information, to make text-based inferences, and to recall text. The components of our task predict performance on a test of global reading comprehension and on a range of specific comprehension tests, each of which draws more heavily on one particular component. Our task is better at predicting reading comprehension than is a typical working memory span task and has the potential for advancing researchers' understanding and measurement of a range of linguistic and cognitive tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of separate and interactive imagery on the recall of movement patterns.

Contrasted separate imagery instructions with interactive imagery instructions on memory for movement patterns. 48 undergraduates were presented pairs of movement patterns and were instructed to form separate images of each pattern or to form interactive images linking the patterns together. Cued recall performance and the organization of free recall was enhanced following interactive imagery instructions compared with separate imagery instructions. Total free recall, however, was similar for interactive and separate imagery. The advantage of interactive imagery over separate imagery in cued recall was attenuated when Ss were given instructions that imposed restrictions on the formation of their interactive images. Several explanations of the memorial consequences of imagery instructions are considered in light of these results, including I. Begg's (see record 1983-04913-001) organization-redintegration account of imagery instructions. (French abstract) (8 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further comparison of representational and transformational prose-learning imagery.

120 8th graders were asked to read fictitious passages describing the accomplishments of famous people. Two types of visual imagery instructions (representational and transformational) were manipulated within 2 passage types (name and occupation), along with no-strategy control instructions for each passage type. Data show that, consistent with theoretical predictions, transformational imagery instructions were uniquely effective on the difficult-to-remember name passages, but not on the more easily represented occupation passages. Representational imagery instructions were not facilitative on either passage type. Results support the 2nd author's (1981) distinction among prose-learning imagery functions and suggest that transformational imagery substantially improves recall of difficult-to-remember factual information, while explicit imagery instructions are not as critical for passages that contain directly codable information. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related differences in memory as a function of imagery processing.

The effects of aging on imagery production and use (following the learning of concrete and abstract words) and their relations to subsequent memory performance were explored in 2 experiments. Both experiments demonstrated better free recall of concrete than of abstract words (the concreteness effect). Exp 1 showed this superiority to be greater for young Ss only under explicit imagery instructions. Exp 2 revealed that the advantage of concrete over abstract words reflects the use of differential imagery production. The results are discussed in terms of age differences in imagery utilization and the effects of visual processing on recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incidental learning, noun imagery-concreteness and direction of associations in paired-associate learning.

Examined the effect of imagery-concreteness pairs in incidental learning. In Exp. I with 96 undergraduates, intentional learning was superior to incidental learning. Recall of concrete-concrete noun pairs was significantly better than recall of all other pairs, while concrete-abstract and abstract-concrete nouns did not differ from each other but did differ from abstract-abstract recall. In Exp. II with 64 Ss, instructions to use imagery during the orientation task resulted in similar performance for incidental and intentional learning Ss. Concreteness yielded a greater effect on the stimulus side than on the response side of pairs, particularly for stimulus-response recall. Associative directionality had no reliable effects in either experiment. Results are discussed in terms of A. Paivio's conceptual peg hypothesis and 2-process theory of verbal and imaginal memory. (French summary) (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Keyword and context instruction of new vocabulary meanings: Effects on text comprehension and memory.

New vocabulary was taught by one of three methods: keyword, semantic context, and no-strategy control. The semantic context method involved presenting subjects verbal contexts from which they might infer the meanings of the words, followed by explicit provision of the definitions. After a vocabulary definition acquisition phase, subjects in all conditions read a text in which some of the newly acquired vocabulary was embedded, with half of the texts providing richer contextual clues to the meaning of the target items (embellished text) than the other texts (unembellished text). Reading times did not differ as a function of acquisition condition, nor did one acquisition condition consistently elicit better performance than the others across text comprehension/memory measures. The one significant difference in comprehension favored the keyword method. The usual superiority of the keyword method for recall of definitions given vocabulary items was also replicated. Despite theoretically motivated concerns that keyword-method acquisition of definitions might inhibit comprehension of vocabulary in discourse relative to a semantic context method, none of the reaction time (RT) or performance analyses reported here supported those hypotheses. A subsidiary finding was that test text embellishments increased comprehension (as indexed by recall measures), a result suggesting that certain kinds of contextual support can enhance comprehension of "new" vocabulary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of attention during encoding in implicit and explicit memory.

In 5 experiments, participants read study words under conditions of divided or full attention. Dividing attention reduced performance on the general knowledge test, a conceptual implicit test of memory. Likewise, dividing attention reduced conceptual priming on the word association task, as well as on a matched explicit test, associate-cued recall. In contrast, even very strong division of attention did not reduce perceptual priming on word-fragment completion, although it did reduce recall on the matched explicit test of word-fragment-cued recall. Finally, dividing attention reduced recall on the perceptual explicit tests of graphemic-cued recall and graphemic recognition. The results indicate that perceptual implicit tests rely minimally on attention-demanding encoding processes relative to other types of memory tests. The obtained pattern of dissociations is not readily accommodated by the transfer-appropriate-processing (TAP) account of implicit and explicit memory. Potential extensions of the TAP view are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trade-offs in Detecting Letters and Comprehending Text.

Critics of the letter detection task have questioned whether findings from that paradigm reflect normal reading processes. The present study addresses these questions using a new computerized version of the letter detection task in which reading rate along with letter detection and comprehension accuracy are examined. Previous letter detection findings were replicated with this new computerized task. Different conditions were compared in which detection and comprehension instructions were manipulated as well as the salience of the target letters. The requirement to comprehend had small effects on letter detection accuracy and reading rate, and letter detection only modestly reduced comprehension. Thus, the procedures developed in this study permit examination of the component processes contributing to performance in the letter detection task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Investigation of functional working memory in the reading span test.

Two issues were investigated in 2 experiments: (1) the validity of a reading span test that combined a knowledge verification task with a secondary task of word memorization and (2) the hypothesis that word recall reflects the amount of working memory that is functional in reading. In Exp 1, the validity and reliability of the reading span measure were determined. In Exp 2, it was reasoned that if word recall reflected functional working memory in reading, then 2 results should be observed. The 1st predicted result was that prior exposure to sentences used in the reading span test would release working memory resources and improve word recall. The 2nd was that word recall, though correlated with general working memory and verbal knowledge measures, would add to these scores in predicting comprehension. Both sets of results were obtained, supporting the hypothesis that the reading span test measures functional working memory in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bizarre imagery as an effective memory aid: The importance of distinctiveness.

Five experiments with 304 undergraduates investigated the effects of imagery type (bizarre or common) on memory of word triplets. In Exp I bizarre imagery increased recall when imagery type was manipulated in a within-list design but not when imagery type was manipulated in a between-list design. Results of Exp II show that this effect occurred with imagery processing instructions and not with semantic processing instructions. Exp III indicated that bizarre imagery facilitated recall in a within-list design for both self-paced and experimenter-paced presentations of the stimuli, and Exp IV, the pattern of effects of bizarre imagery on memory (in a within-list design) did not parallel the effects of presentation rate on memory. Data from Exps I through IV are inconsistent with an attentional explanation of bizarre imagery effects. In Exp V, when several types of additional learning were interpolated between initial imaginal processing and testing, bizarre imagery produced better recall with a between-list manipulation, but only when the additional learning involved common imagery. In addition to delineating the conditions under which bizarre imagery improves recall, overall findings suggest that distinctiveness may underlie the bizarreness effect. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Imagery, verbatim and paraphrased questions, and retention of meaningful sentences.

90 male and female college students learned a list of 28 declarative sentences and rated the sentences for imagery or pronounceability. Ss were given either verbatim or paraphrased test questions during acquisition and were tested with a 2nd paraphrased question on the retention test. Imagery instructions and paraphrased acquisition questions, which guided subsequent encoding of the sentences, produced superior retention. Levels-of-processing ideas and the encoding specificity principle were invoked to explain these results. Finally, paraphrased test questions did, but imagery rating did not, increase the conditional probability of a correct recall on the retention test given a correct recall during acquisition. This latter result seems to support A. Paivo's (1974) dual process theory of memory. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)