Students' Studying Processes on Course Related Texts: The Impact of Inserted Questions

Abstract

This article reports the results of two studies which investigated the impact of inserted questions on the studying activities of students reading their own course related materials. In both studies macro eye-movements of the students were monitored as they studied texts with or without inserted questions. In Study 1, involving 36 undergraduate university students, the Question Group showed more lookbacks to relevant information than the No Question Group with one of two sets of questions, and more lookbacks to incidental information with both sets of questions. However, neither reading time nor performance on a test differed between the two groups. Study 2 was designed to extend the findings to elementary school children and to examine the effects of ability. A sample of 54 fifth-grade better and poorer readers were given course related materials either with or without inserted questions. Children given inserted questions did not look back to relevant material more often than children without questions. Poorer readers given one of two sets of inserted questions did look back to incidental material more often than poorer readers without questions, but this was not the case with better readers. Presence of questions did not influence test performance; however, better readers scored higher on the test than poorer readers. Generally, it was concluded that inserted questions do influence students' studying activities on their own texts where text access is allowed but that questions inserted in such situations have little impact on test performance.