Thinking out loud while studying text: Rehearsing key ideas.

The purpose of this study was to identify mechanisms by which instructional objectives produce their effects on learning. College students studied text with and without objectives. The objective-relevant information was either important (high) or unimportant (low) in the content structure of the text. Protocols for thinking out loud were examined for evidence of rehearsal activity. The dependent measures were rehearsal activity, free recall, and reading time of the objective-relevant information. The results indicated that rehearsal activity and recall were greater and reading times were longer with objectives than without objectives. Rehearsal activity was correlated significantly with recall and reading time; recall also was correlated significantly with reading time. In addition, more information was recalled when the objective-relevant information was high in the content structure. The results suggest that instructional objectives promote real-time rehearsal activity—that is, the activity of mentally repeating, paraphrasing, and summarizing information so as to commit it to memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)