The effects of a utility value intervention combined with task relevance instructions

Abstract

The current study examined the effect of combining a utility value intervention with task relevance instructions on utility value, recall, and reading time. A utility value intervention is an activity that assists students in making relevance connections between course content and their lives, while task relevance instructions are pre-reading cues designed to help readers determine the relevance of information to a reading goal. A total of 197 undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology courses participated in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to read a text as a prospective tourism coordinator of Honduras or Pitcairn or read a text about four remote countries. The intervention increased the utility value of relevant text information, meaning that students for whom Honduras information was relevant found Honduras text information more valuable than Pitcairn information. Similarly, students in the Pitcairn group found Pitcairn text information more useful than Honduras information. Participants also recalled more relevant content than irrelevant text information. This means that students in the Honduras group recalled more Honduras information than Pitcairn information. Likewise, participants in the Pitcairn condition recalled more Pitcairn information than Honduras information. Interestingly, the combined approach impacted reading times differently across experimental conditions. In particular, participants in the Honduras group spent more time reading Honduras text segments than Pitcairn information. However, students in the Pitcairn condition paid equal attention to Pitcairn and Honduras text information. The study has important theoretical implications and practical value.