Motivation and learning — The role of interest in construction of representation of text and long-term retention: Inter- and intraindividual analyses

Abstract

The present work examined the influence of topic interest on the strength of different components of text representation and long-term retention according to the model of text processing by van Dijk and Kintsch (1983). A Series of relevant personality characteristics were assessed to control for alternative explanations ofinterest effect. A total of 286 8th, 9th, and 10th grade students was assigned to either a high topic interest or a low topic interest group. The participants had to read tow different texts (two weeks). Immediately afterwards, various process variables were assessed: Finally, participants weren given a recognition and verification tests, designed to assess the strength of the verbatim, propositional, and situational text representation. One Week after reading, students completed a recall rneasure: The interindividual finding with respect to the components of the representation of text revealed that the verbatim and the prepositional representation were not very predictable. The intraindividual analyses were more successful. The results were more consistent and interpretable with respect to the recall oftext. It was shown quite clearly that the effects ofinterest are not only short-term. Most importantly, it could be shown that topic interest is related to text recall independently ofother significant predictors.

Interest, inferences, and learning from texts

“…Previous research findings have shown that topic interest is positively associated with performance on cloze assessments of texts (Asher & Markell, 1974), accurate answers to open-ended reading comprehension questions (Schiefele, 1990), text recall (Naceur & Schiefele, 2005;Schiefele & Krapp, 1996), and accurately completing diagrams about information in the text (Boscolo & Mason, 2003). However, the cognitive process responsible for this positive association is uncertain.…”

“…There are two hypotheses specific to Study 1. Our first hypothesis is that topic interest will be positively associated with both measures of learning from texts (recall and answers to comprehension questions) based on previous findings reported in the literature (e.g., Boscolo & Mason, 2003;Naceur & Schiefele, 2005;Schiefele, 1990). Our second hypothesis is that the positive associations between topic interest and learning from text will be independent of the effects of background knowledge as measured through scores on a pre-test.…”

Measuring strategy use in context with multiple-choice items

“…Word reading fluency The word reading fluency measure was a one-minute timed maze task based on Naceur and Schiefele (2005). Participants silently read a one-page (234-word) passage about the immune system from Starr and McMillan (2001).…”

Exploring Practical Potentials of Business Simulation Games

“…It was previously found that learning by games would improve an individual's retention rate when compared to other learning methods [23] [46]. Retention rate is generally related to a student's interest level [40]. Researchers note that BSGs tend to aptly engage trainees, since engagement and interests in learning are closely related [50].…”