The impact of rereading on older adults’ comprehension and metacomprehension of negative text

Abstract

ABSTRACT Negated text is a difficult text construction that readers encounter in various forms throughout their lives. Despite a wealth of research on its impact, including potential strategies to improve comprehension, readers maintain poor comprehension when encountering this text construction. Given its large potential impact on reading texts like medical paperwork or insurance documents, it is important to understand not only what makes the construction difficult but also what can help a reader better process the information communicated in this way. The present research explored the impact of rereading on older adults’ comprehension and metacomprehension of negated text. Results demonstrated that while rereading was beneficial for older adults’ comprehension overall, this benefit was not specific to negated text. Moreover, metacomprehension data demonstrated that both young and older readers are aware of the difficulty they have in understanding negated text, but corresponding comprehension remains low. Results suggest that an additional reading of a passage containing negated text helped to mitigate the comprehension deficits associated with text that has been negated. This demonstrates that the comprehension accuracy can be improved for negated text under these circumstances. Future research should explore what specific factors associated with re-reading helps to improve comprehension accuracy.