Motivation and learning — The role of interest in construction of representation of text and long-term retention: Inter- and intraindividual analyses

Abstract

The present work examined the influence of topic interest on the strength of different components of text representation and long-term retention according to the model of text processing by van Dijk and Kintsch (1983). A Series of relevant personality characteristics were assessed to control for alternative explanations of interest effect. A total of 286 8th, 9th, and 10th grade students was assigned to either a high topic interest or a low topic interest group. The participants had to read tow different texts (two weeks). Immediately afterwards, various process variables were assessed: Finally, participants weren given a recognition and verification tests, designed to assess the strength of the verbatim, propositional, and situational text representation. One Week after reading, students completed a recall rneasure: The interindividual finding with respect to the components of the representation of text revealed that the verbatim and the prepositional representation were not very predictable. The intraindividual analyses were more successful. The results were more consistent and interpretable with respect to the recall of text. It was shown quite clearly that the effects of interest are not only short-term. Most importantly, it could be shown that topic interest is related to text recall independently of other significant predictors.