Two experiments were conducted that examined the effects of tangential information on readers' comprehension of explanatory texts. Participants were recruited from Introduction to Psychology courses. They were assigned to read one of three versions of a text (i.e., a base-text version, a base-text plus seductive details version or a base-text plus boring details version) about the process of lightning or the lifecycle of a white dwarf star. In Experiment 1, participants were told they had to write down everything they could remember from their passage when they finished reading. The base-text group recalled more of the core content than either of the other two groups. Lengthening a text by adding tangential information interfered with readers' ability to recall the information. More interestingly, the boring details group recalled more core content than the seductive details group. The degree of interestingness of the tangential information had an independent effect on readers' memory. Reading times were also recorded and analyzed. The seductive details group spent less time reading the core content of the passage than either the base-text and boring details groups, which did not differ. The presence of seductive details reduced the amount of attention readers allocated to processing the core content of the passage. In Experiment 2, readers were told that they had to verify whether or not certain sentences were presented in the passage they just finished reading. Reading times did not differ among the three groups. A post-hoc analysis of reading times across experiments revealed that participants in Experiment 1 spent more time processing the passages than those in Experiment 2. This suggests that changing the memory task from free-recall to a recognition-based task may have altered readers' online processing. In the sentence verification task, there was a tendency for participants who read a passage that included detail sentences to respond faster but less accurately. The presence of detail sentences lead readers to perform more poorly on identifying whether or not sentences were actually in the passage they read as compared to readers of the same passage without details.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of context-dependency of seductive details on recall and transfer in multimedia learning environments. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, the purpose was to identify context-dependent vs. context-independent seductive details in a lightning animation. Seductive details were considered as interesting yet irrelevant sentences in the narration of lightning animation. Sixty-seven undergraduate students participated in Experiment 1 and assigned interestingness scores to the 28 content irrelevant sentences. Participants were assigned to two different groups, context-dependent seductive details group (CDSD) and context-independent seductive details group (CISD). Participants in the CDSD group assigned interestingness scores after watching a lightning animation to be familiarized with the context of lightning formation. Participants in the CISD group watched a historical inquiry animation as a distraction task before assigning interestingness scores. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that 13 of 28 sentences in the lightning formation text were seductive details according to participants of the study. Ultimately, 6 of the 13 seductive details were determined to be context-dependent and 7 were determined to be seductive details were context-independent. The purpose of Experiment 2 was to investigate the effects of context-dependency of seductive details on recall and transfer in multimedia learning environments. Undergraduate students (n = 184) were randomly assigned into four groups. Participants in all groups watched a lightning animation, and performed a recall and a transfer task. The first group watched an animation that did not include any seductive details. The second group watched the animation with context-dependent seductive details only. The third group watched the animation with context-independent seductive details only. The last group watched the animation with both types of seductive details. A 2x2 ANOVA for both recall and transfer, and contrast analyses were conducted to determine the effects of context-dependency of seductive details on recall and transfer. The results indicated that there was no significant effect of context-dependency of seductive details on recall or transfer. The findings are discussed in the context of the related literature and directions for future research are suggested. / Ph. D.

Multimedia learning theory, and the research that has supported it, is largely focused on the cognitive elements of learning. Although motivation has been mentioned as a factor in learning in a multimedia environment, motivation has not been measured as a distinctive variable in most studies. Specific attributes of multimedia, including seductive details and segmentation, have been hypothesized to increase interest; however, only studies examining these attributes— effects on learning (measured by recall and transfer) have been conducted. The present study aimed to extend the examination of the use of seductive details and segmentation in multimedia learning by measuring interest in addition to recall and transfer. The participants were 167 undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to four treatment groups involving a tutorial on the formation of lightning, which differed according to the multimedia attributes featured in the tutorial. Treatment groups included seductive details and segmentation (SD+S), seductive details and no segmentation (SD+NS), no seductive details and segmentation (NSD+S), and no seductive details and no segmentation (NSD+NS). Participants took an interest questionnaire before engaging with the tutorial and immediately following the tutorial. Tests of recall and transfer were used to measure learning after the tutorial. Two trained raters evaluated responses. Data from the study were analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and correlation procedures. The results of the study revealed no significant differences among treatment groups in regards to interest, recall, or transfer. There was no significant relationship between interest and recall or interest and transfer. Although the results did not provide support for existing literature on seductive details and segmentation effects or reveal that these attributes increase interest, the implications of the findings present several valuable areas for future research. / Ph. D.

Seductive details (SDs) are interesting, but not necessarily relevant, information that may be included in text to capture students’ attention. Unfortunately, including such details often hinders learning. Schraw (1998) differentiated between context-independent (i.e., interesting without surrounding context) and context-dependent (i.e., interesting only in light of surrounding context) SDs. In the first study, 388 undergraduate students read six paragraphs describing Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual stages (i.e., target material). Participants in four groups also read one of two biographical paragraphs. The biographical paragraphs contained SDs about Freud that were either context-dependent or -independent to the target material and presented before (primacy) or after (recency) the target-material paragraphs or not at all (Control). After reading, students took a quiz. Quiz performance was not influenced by the type of SDs but rather its placement relative to the target text. Students in the primacy conditions performed worse than students in the recency and control conditions. Thus, both types of SDs reduced learning when they were presented at the beginning of the text. Study 2 examined a potential interaction between SDs and a graphic organizer (GO). GOs are designed to help learners make connections among ideas in the text by visually representing the concepts to be learned (Ausubel, 1960; Robinson & Kiewra, 1995). In Study 2, 207 undergraduate students read the same target material from Study 1. Depending on condition, the participants also read the context-dependent biographical paragraph (SD only), read a GO that linked the SDs to the target material (GO only), read both (GO + SD), or only read the target material (Control). After reading, students took a quiz. Participants in the GO only group and the Control group performed significantly better on the quiz items than participants in the SD only group. There was no significant difference between the Control group and the GO + SD group. Results from both studies suggest that the GO mitigated the seductive details effect but did not reverse it. There is evidence for both the diversion hypothesis (priming inappropriate schema) and the distraction hypothesis (focusing the reader’s attention on the SDs as opposed to the target material).

According to the seductive details (SD) effect, interesting, but irrelevant information in learning materials reduces learning outcomes. Basic research suggests that subjects in positive mood are more distractible by task‐irrelevant stimuli than subjects in negative mood. Hence, mood could moderate the SD effect. We tested this assumption by comparing eye movements to seductive pictures in participants in positive versus negative mood. As expected, participants in positive mood fixated pictures longer and more frequently than participants in negative mood, which can be interpreted in terms of mood‐based higher distractibility. However, this did not translate to a more pronounced SD effect in the learning test. Unexpectedly, there was no SD effect in either mood condition. We discuss implications of the eye‐tracking data as well as potential reasons for the nonexistent SD effect in our study.

abstract: Students' ability to regulate and control their behaviors during learning has been shown to be a critical skill for academic success. However, researchers often struggle with ways to capture the nuances of this ability, often solely relying on self-report measures. This thesis proposal employs a novel approach to investigating variations in students' ability to self-regulate by using process data from the game-based Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) iSTART-ME. This approach affords a nuanced examination of how students' regulate their interactions with game-based features at both a coarse-grained and fine-grain levels and the ultimate impact that those behaviors have on in-system performance and learning outcomes (i.e., self-explanation quality). This thesis is comprised of two submitted manuscripts that examined how a group of 40 high school students chose to engage with game-based features and how those interactions influenced their target skill performance. Findings suggest that in-system log data has the potential to provide stealth assessments of students' self-regulation while learning. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Psychology 2014