When a student is faced with information from multiple lengthy chapters of a text to learn for an exam, a major component of that task is sorting the wheat from the chaff. Because it is neither possible nor necessary to learn every proposition in a text, the learner needs some method of determining which information should receive the most attention. The general purpose of the work reported in this article is to investigate factors that affect how readers with low prior knowledge identify important material when reading a text chapter in preparation for a test. The purpose is not to develop a model of the ideal reader or ideal text but to examine factors that affect how typical readers contend with typical text. In the present case, typical text means text that was originally written for instruction, rather than a short narrative or text written by a psychologist to meet specific experimental constraints. Unlike the short texts typically used in reading comprehension experiments, the text used in the studies reported here is equivalent to an entire textbook chapter in length. The specific purpose of this article is to explore how one aspect of the surface representation of an informative text guides or biases what is recalled by readers. Although considerable research has been done on signaling devices that guide readers' understanding of a text (see Lorch, 1989, for a review), one feature that has received relatively little attention is repetition or frequency of mention; this cue is the primary focus of the experiments in this article. There are two primary issues that provide context for the present experiments. One issue has to do with the circumstances under which various types of cues to importance in text might be effective. Another issue concerns the implications of using lengthy informative text as experimental material; this issue will be discussed prior to a discussion of importance cues.
Read full abstract
Jan 1, 2001
John R Surber 
Open Access