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This article presents a model to predict the readability of documents encountered by older adults. The documents studied require readers to answer questions about charts (e.g., bus schedules), labels (e.g., prescriptions), and forms (e.g., tax forms). The components of the model include such factors as discourse structure, emphasis, and position of an answer in a linguistic analysis of the everyday document. 482 Ss (aged 52-93 yrs) took the everyday problems test as well as a psychometric ability battery. The correlation was .54 between the readability scores for test items predicted by the model and the percentage of Ss correctly answering ...

Objective: To test whether the format in which women receive probabilistic information about breast cancer and mammography affects their comprehension. Methods: A convenience sample of 180 women received pre-assembled randomized packages containing a breast health information brochure, with probabilities presented in either verbal or numeric format, and four questionnaires. Enclosed questionnaires assessed womens knowledge of breast health, socio-demographic/ clinical characteristics, comprehension of breast health information brochure and format preference. Results: Nearly two-thirds of the study participants reported a preference for the numeric format. However, the study results showed that comprehension was significantly higher among women who received probabilistic information in ...

This research studies the theory that limitations in working memory pose a lower limit to reading rate under conditions designed to elicit prose recall. Two studies are documented in this article. Study 1 investigates 3 presentation rates for college students to determine effects of imposing reading speeds below and above "optimal" reading rates. The results indicate that although efficiency increases with reading rate, prose retrieval decreases. Contrary to predictions of this lower limits theory, the slowest rate generated an increase in prose retrieval and a high rating of desirability by readers. Study 2 addresses some questions generated by the first ...

This research studies the theory that limitations in working memory pose a lower limit to reading rate under conditions designed to elicit prose recall. Two studies are documented in this article. Study 1 investigates 3 presentation rates for college students to determine effects of imposing reading speeds below and above "optimal" reading rates. The results indicate that although efficiency increases with reading rate, prose retrieval decreases. Contrary to predictions of this lower limits theory, the slowest rate generated an increase in prose retrieval and a high rating of desirability by readers. Study 2 addresses some questions generated by the first ...

Two studies were conducted that examined whether advance organizers would have differential benefits for older individuals when compared with young adults. Experiment 1 investigated age and treatment effects in recall of a passage at two delay intervals. Experiment 2 partially replicated the first experiment, but it also evaluated the effectiveness of advance organization with a sample of adults of limited verbal ability in remembering the information provided in text from the gist of a passage through three levels of detail. Results indicated that advance organizers may help adults of all ages, but only under restricted circumstances. In the first experiment, ...

Two studies were conducted that examined whether advance organizers would have differential benefits for older individuals when compared with young adults. Experiment 1 investigated age and treatment effects in recall of a passage at two delay intervals. Experiment 2 partially replicated the first experiment, but it also evaluated the effectiveness of advance organization with a sample of adults of limited verbal ability in remembering the information provided in text from the gist of a passage through three levels of detail. Results indicated that advance organizers may help adults of all ages, but only under restricted circumstances. In the first experiment, ...

Readability can be viewed as an interaction between a text and the reader’s prose-processing capabilities, rather than as some innate property of a text. In support of this view, this article applies an extended and formalized version of the Kintsch en van Dijk prose processing model to 20 texts varying in readability. Each text was read by 120 subjects; reading times and recall protocols were collected. In addition, each text was analyzed y the processing model. This analysis allowed recall predictions based on the frequency of microstructure processing of text’s propositions and readability predictions from the frequencies of events that ...

Three experiments investigated the influence of connectives on memory for expository text. Ss in Exps 1 and 2 read and later recalled passages with either no connectives, temporal connectives, causal connectives, or intentional connectives. The recall for passages without connectives was higher than the recall for passages with connectives. Results partially supported a semantic complexity hypothesis, which predicted that recall should increase with the semantic complexity of the connective (i.e., temporal