Effets des objectifs de lecture sur le rappel et la compréhension d'un texte

Abstract

Summary : The Effects of reading goals on text recall and comprehension. This paper examines whether it is relevant to use methods designed to study memory in order to test text comprehension. The aim of this research is to compare subjects' performances on two tests with different reading goals. The first test required the free recall of an expository text, the second one involved a comprehension test about the macro-structure of the same text. For this comprehension test, the subjects were asked to fdl the gaps in a text summary where the macro-predicates had been removed. The results show that subjects reading with the intention to recall the text perform as well in the memory test as those who read for comprehension. On the other hand, the latter perform better in the comprehension test than the former. These results suggest that the free recall paradigm is not a reliable method for studying the subprocesses involved in comprehension. They emphasize the importance of utilising a collection of different comprehension tests, each of them testing each subprocess separately. Keys-words : reading goals, memory and text comprehension, comprehension tests.