Organization and comprehensibility in scientific proofs: or, "Consider a particle p…"

Abstract

Scientific texts commonly present principles by first giving a proof and only afterward stating the principle—a “proof-first” organization. This specialized text structure differs from conventional structures in that it lacks thematic information to guide text processing. The current research examined the effects on comprehension of this proof-first organization. This was done by comparing the processing of proof-first texts to that of “principle-first” texts, in which the theme (i.e., the principle) is stated at the beginning. Readers had more difficulty determining what was important when reading proof-first texts and reorganized proof-first texts into a principle-first structure when summarizing. The proof-first organization also decreased recall of the principle. These results suggest that, compared with a principle-first structure, the proof-first structure increases processing difficulty and results in a less complete text representation.

Equations in Scientific Proofs: Effects on Comprehension

“…This is consistent with research that suggests that readers studying this type of text tend to process the proof and principle components independently (Dee-Lucas & Larkin, 1990). It is possible that the transfer problems included in this study were simply not difficult enough to prompt learners to draw on their knowledge of the proof.…”

“…This finding suggests that readers focused more on the principle than on the proof (i.e., they put more effort into understanding and remembering this information), in that they were better able to recall the details of the principle necessary for solving the find-value problems. This is consistent with prior research that has shown that readers studying these types of text consider the principle to be more important (Dee-Lucas & Larkin, 1990). The fact that performance on the proof and principle problems differed for the find-value problems but not the comparison problems suggests that readers learned the proof relations at the general level necessary to solve the comparisonproblems, but did not attend to the details of the proof relationships and, thus, could not solve the find-value problems.…”

“…These questions were included to determine if the expected differences in learners' understanding of the proof were reflected in their understanding of the principle as well. Prior research suggests that learners process principle and proof information independently, such that variations in how the principle is presented do not influence the internal representation formed for the proof (Dee-Lucas & Larkin, 1990). The principle problems (direct-application and transfer problems) were included in this study to determine if variations in proof comprehension influence understanding of the corresponding principle or if these two components of scientific proofs are processed independently, as suggested by earlier research.…”

Novice Strategies for Comprehending Technical Texts

“…Information (Dee-Lucas & Larkin, 1989). Because the principle and proof are completely comprehensible as stand-alone units, it is not necessary for readers to actively interrelate the Information from the two passage segments.…”

Detection of explanation obstacles in scientific texts: the effect of an understanding task vs. an experiment task

“…A substantial number of studies have examined variables that influence comprehension of scientific discourse, such as text features, readers' interest, previous knowledge or reading skills (Alexander, Kulikowich, and Schulze 1994;Brincones and Otero 1994;Dee-Lucas and Larkin 1990;Ozuru, Dempsey, and McNamara 2009). This study focuses on incomprehension, rather than comprehension, examining the variables that influence the detection of obstacles to comprehension in scientific texts, and the use of questions to overcome these obstacles.…”