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An experiment investigated the memorial effects of three different writing tasks and worksheet exercises assigned as study activities to accompany reading. High school boys and girls read and recalled a pretreatment target text and then read a sequence of topically related passages and reacted to each by paraphrasing, formulating questions, comparing and contrasting, or completing matching exercises on worksheets. Afterward, the students again recalled the target text. A comparison of information given in retelling the target text before and after performing the study tasks indicated that quality of inferences differed according to assigned writing task. Writing questions and compare-contrast statements resulted in the generation of significantly more new information, and writing questions resulted in the recall of proportionally more superordinate information. The results are explained as stemming from the organizing requirements of writing.A growing body of literature in education and psychology advocates combining writing with reading as a profitable study technique. Beach and Bridwell (1984), Flower (1979), Kintsch and van Dijk (1978), Page (1974), and others argue that, when combined with reading, writing fosters the identification of significant information in a text and encourages reflection on that information as it is organized into a coherent written response. Wittrock (1983) asserts that writing generates relations among the parts of a text and between a text and its reader's experience. Eanet and Manzo (1976) and Odell (1980) further claim that by varying the writing task in response to reading, a teacher can exercise control over the way students think about the content of a text.

This study investigated the effects of explicitly cuing graphic aids in accompanying text. Specifically, the study attempted to determine if various cuing conditions would affect differently good and poor readers' comprehension of the text, attention to graphic aids, and recall of information displayed in graphic aids. Three expository passages each accompanied by two graphic aids were developed. One graphic aid displayed information that was redundant to the text; a second graphic aid displayed information that was non-redundant but related to the text. Good and poor seventh-and eighth-grade readers read these passages under five different conditions. Under one condition no graphic aids accompanied the text. Graphic aids accompanied the text in the remaining conditions that represented four levels of cuing: no cuing, general cuing, specific cuing, and combined cuing. Results of comprehension tests for each passage and a post-experiment graphics test were analyzed using analysis of variance procedures. Major conclusions were that explicit cuing increases attention to graphic aids and recall of information displayed in graphic aids that are redundant to the text. In addition, poor readers' comprehension of illustrated text is improved by explicit cuing of graphic aids.