Prose processing in adulthood: The text, the reader, and the task

Effects of organizational signals on free recall of expository text.

“…With the findings of the current study and those of Lorch et al (1993), the general conclusion that emerges is that organizational signals influence the distribution of ideas recalled (i.e., information is accessed about more topics) and the organization of recall (i.e., recall more closely follows the organization of topics in the text); see Meyer and Rice (1989). This pattern of empirical effects is consistent with the general hypothesis that signals cause readers to construct a topic structure representation that is coherent and salient in memory, which, in turn, affects the memory search process at recall (Meyer, 1975;Meyer et al, 1980).…”

“…It has often been hypothesized that organizational signals should facilitate text recall by aiding readers in representing the organization of a text, which, in turn, should facilitate a systematic search of the text representation at retrieval (e.g., Meyer, 1975). In fact, organizational signals have often been found not to affect overall recall (Brooks, Dansereau, Spurlin, & Holley, 1983;Lorch, Lorch, & Inman, 1993;Meyer, 1975;Meyer & Rice, 1982) except for specific groups of readers (Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, 1980;Meyer & Rice, 1989) or under limited text conditions Meyer & Rice, 1989). Recently, it has been reported that the presence of organizational signals in a text does aid readers in representing the text's topic structure but that the effect on free recall is to influence the distribution of recall of text content rather than the amount of material recalled (Lorch et al, 1993).…”

Disfluencies in Comprehending Argumentative Texts

“…These devices are used by writers to emphasize the structure of texts and to signal importance. Prior research has shown that readers' representation of the structure of narrative and expository texts is aided by signals that clarify the structure (Beck, McKeown, Sinatra, & Loxterman, 1991;Kozmnsky, 1977;Lorch & Lorch, 1995Lorch, Lorch, & Inman, 1993;Meyer & Rice, 1989;Millis & Just, 1994). This is especially true for challenging texts (Spyridakis & Standal, 1987) and for low-knowledge participants (Goldman, Saul, & Cote, 1995;Lorch & Lorch, 1996).…”

Training the Elderly: The Example of Class Inclusion

“…Several studies have noted the impact of elderly participants' education on performance on cognitive tasks such as text comprehension and recall (Meyer & Rice, 1989) or categorization (N. W. Denney & Cornelius, 1975;Laurence & Arrowood, 1982). T h e purpose of our study was, thus, to attempt to improve the reasoning performance of elderly participants in class-inclusion tasks and to examine the role of education on their performance.…”