Effects of text genre and verbal ability on adult age differences in sensitivity to test structure.

Abstract

The present study examined the effects of verbal ability and text genre on adult age differences in sensitivity to the semantic structure of prose. Young and older adults of low or high verbal ability heard narrative and expository passages at different presentation rates. The results demonstrated that older adults recalled less than younger adults and that age differences in recall were larger for low-verbal adults and expository texts. However, subjects from all groups favored the main ideas in their recalls for both types of passages. The results indicated that adult age similarities in the ability to focus on the main ideas when processing prose was not compromised by the verbal ability of the subjects or the organization of the passages used. However, the results also demonstrate how the characteristics of the learner and the characteristics of the text modulate the size of the age differences observed.

Effects of Passage Type on Comprehension Monitoring and Recall in Good and Poor Readers

“…Futhermore, students had higher overall lookback scores for narrative passages containing inconsistencies but not for expository passages containing inconsistencies. As already noted, researchers (Black & Bern, 1981;Fletcher et al, 1990;Petros et al, 1989;Tun, 1989) have suggested that increased causal connections in narrative passages may lead to easier integration of sentences for these passages, and our results do suggest that this is the case for students. Students seemed better able to focus their rereading attempts when reading narrative passages, and the inconsistencies appeared to be more salient against a background of sentences that may have been easier to integrate.…”

“…There have been several studies, however, in which memory for narrative and expository texts has been compared in adult subjects. In these studies, adults have been found to recall more information from narrative than expository texts (e.g., Petros et al, 1989;Tun, 1989), supporting the notion that narrative texts are more causally cohesive.…”

“…Although propositions in both narrative and expository texts can be integrated through referential connections, narrative propositions are easier to integrate because of additional causal connections (Black & Bern, 1981;Fletcher, Hummel, & Marsolek, 1990;Perros et al, 1989;Tun, 1989). Propositions containing causal connections are associated with faster reading times (Tun, 1989) and better memory among adults (Black & Bern, 1981;Myers, O'Brien, Balota, & Toyofuku, 1984;Petros et al, 1989;Tun, 1989). Researchers have suggested that causal connections may affect both encoding and retrieval of text information (Myers, Shinjo, & Duffy, 1987;Tun, 1989).…”

“…To date, little, if any, research has been conducted to examine the role of passage type in good and poor readers' evaluation and regulation of understanding. Comparisons across these passage types are of interest because narrative and expository texts vary in cohesiveness (Petros, Norgaard, Olson, & Tabor, 1989;Tun, 1989), which, in turn, affects comprehension and memory. Thus, ease of evaluation and regulation of understanding may differ as a result of passage structure, especially for poor readers who may need the support of better structured texts to integrate information and make inferences (Bridge & Winograd, 1982).…”

Environmental, cognitive, and metacognitive influences on text revision: Assessing the evidence

“…Comparing genres has shown that adults have better recall of narrative texts than of expository texts (Petros, Norgaard, Olson, and Tabor, 1989;Tun, 1989), and that narrative texts are read faster than expository texts (Petros et aL, 1989;Tun, 1989;Graesser et aL, in press). Easier reading and better recall have been attributed to narrative texts being more cohesive than expository texts (Black and Bern, 1981;Fletcher, Hummel, and Marsolek, 1990), but Weaver and Bryant (1995) found that recall and speed differences between expositions and narratives vanished when the genres were equated for reading difficulty.…”