This study investigated the effects of macrosignals, readability level, and training in a reading strategy on 241 high school students' comprehension and recall of a reading passage. / Half of the students studied a reading strategy that uses macrosignals to enhance comprehension and aid recall. The remaining participants received instruction on conversions in the metric system. / One week after the instruction, the students read one of four versions of the experimental reading passage about the Stone Ages: high readability/with macrosignals, high readability/without macrosignals, low readability/with macrosignals, low readability/without macrosignals. / The with-macrosignals versions included title, headings and subheadings, topic sentences, prequestions, introduction, and summaries. The without macrosignals versions included none of these textual cues. The high readability version was written at twelfth grade level according to the Fry Readability Graph. The low readability version, with shorter sentences and simpler vocabulary, was written at the sixth grade level. / After the 30-minute period allowed for reading the passage, the students responded to the "Ease of Reading Scale" on which they reported symptoms of comprehension and lack of comprehension. Then the students answered twenty multiple-choice, paraphrased comprehension questions. One week later the students completed a free recall test. / A multiple regression analysis revealed no interactions between treatments or between treatments and reading abilities. The analysis also indicated that the macrosignals and training in the reading strategy had no significant effects on comprehension, recall or reported ease in reading. Readability level did not have a significant effect on comprehension or recall. Readability level did have a statistically significant, but not practically important, effect on student's reported reading ease. / Macrosignals may have failed to have an effect because students possessed enough prior knowledge and necessary schemata to construct the relationship between their existing knowledge and the details of the passage. The high readability level may not have been sufficiently above the average student's reading ability to have the predicted effects. The instructional treatment may not have been practiced sufficiently to have the predicted facilitating effects. / The attribute variables (prior knowledge and reading ability) had the greatest influence on comprehension scores, an intermediate effect on delayed recall scores, and the least influence on students' reported ease in reading. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-12, Section: A, page: 3854. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1982.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74970 |
| Contributors | SMITH, PATRICIA LUCILLE., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 347 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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