Selective attention to question-relevant text information precedes high-quality summaries: Evidence from eye movements

José A León,Inmaculada Escudero,Johanna K Kaakinen,José David Moreno

doi:10.16910/jemr.12.1.6

José A León, Inmaculada Escudero + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.1.6

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Abstract

Comprehension and summarizing are closely related. As more strategic and selective processing during reading should be reflected in higher quality of summaries, the aim of this study was to use eye movement patterns to analyze how readers who produce good quality summaries process texts. 40 undergraduate students were instructed to read six expository texts in order to respond a causal question introduced in the end of the first paragraph. After reading, participants produced an oral summary of the text. Based on the quality of the summaries, participants were divided into three groups: High, Medium and Low Quality Summaries. The results revealed that readers who produced High Quality Summaries made significantly more and longer fixations and regressions in the question-relevant parts of texts when compared to the other two summary groups. These results suggest that the summary task performance could be a good predictor of the reading strategies utilized during reading.

Highlights

Current theories of text comprehension assume that readers try to form a coherent memory representation of the text they read (e.g., Kintsch, 1998)
The results showed that readers who demonstrate good summarization skills show strategic reading behavior (Hyönä et al, 2002) and utilize a selective processing strategy (Kaakinen et al, 2002, 2003; León, Moreno, Escudero, Olmos, Ruiz & Lorch, 2019): they spend more time reading question-relevant than question-irrelevant paragraphs, and this preference is seen already during the first-pass reading of the relevant paragraphs
This selective attention to relevant paragraphs and increased looking back to the introductory paragraph is not related to increased recall of text information in general – rather, it is related to increased recall of question-relevant text materials

Summary

Introduction

Current theories of text comprehension assume that readers try to form a coherent memory representation of the text they read (e.g., Kintsch, 1998). Forming a coherent memory representation of the text requires that the reader is capable of connecting the ideas presented in the text to each other as well as of integrating text information with his or her background knowledge (e.g., Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978; van Dijk, Kintsch & van Dijk, 1983). Selective attention to question-relevant text information precedes high-quality summaries: Evidence from eye movements.

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