Causal and Epiphenomenal Use of the Selective Attention Strategy in Prose Comprehension

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to differentiate between causal and epiphenomenal uses of selective attention in a prose learning situation. Attention is defined along two continua for the purposes of the study: attention duration (reflected by reading times) and attention intensity (reflected by probe reaction times). Forty-eight, more successful and less successful, sixth graders read a short passage about a nature walk after being assigned one of two reading objectives. Subjects learned and recalled text elements made salient by the objective instructions better than other text elements. Furthermore, they focused attention duration on those same text elements. Causal analyses revealed that there was no causal relation among salience, attention, and learning for any of these readers. For the more successful readers, the relation was epiphenomenal; attention appeared in the vicinity of salient text items but was not directly related to subjects′ learning of them. For the less successful readers, the relation was weak in all areas. The results are discussed in terms of the development of the ability to effectively use selective attention and the notion of using attention duration as an indicator of information processing in studies dealing with locating and learning written information.