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The influence of reader's goals on organizational signals in text comprehension / Influence of goals

This study researched the question as to whether reading goals and organizational signals interact to affect comprehension. Organizational signals are literary instruments that make the topic structure more salient and increase the recall for the majority of the topics in a text. Readers have specific goals that they wish to accomplish during reading. Participants read one of two texts, which contained one of three levels of signals: no signals, half signals, and full signals. The participants were assigned a specific goal from one of two main categories of goals: reading for school or reading for pleasure. Significant Text and Goal differences were found, but there was no effect of headings. Participants with the school goal recalled more than did the participants with the pleasure goal. It appears that reading goals do have an effect on the processing characteristics that people use while reading, which affects the amount recalled. / Department of Psychological Science

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/188100
Date January 2006
CreatorsSchuster, Jonathan G.
ContributorsRitchey, Kristin A.
Source SetsBall State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Format69 leaves ; 28 cm.
SourceVirtual Press

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