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This study examined whether mock-jurors' comprehension of judicial self-defence instructions improved when an audio-visual instructional format involving computer animations and a flow chart was used. In a mock-juror paradigm, 90 law students (experts) and 90 legally untrained adults (novices) were randomly allocated to one of three instructional conditions (audio, audio-elaborated, audio-visual). Dependent measures of self-defence comprehension included verdict delivery, multiple-choice (recognition), paraphrasing (recall) and novel scenarios (transfer). Law students performed better on self-defence comprehension tests than novices in the audio-only conditions. The audio-visual format significantly enhanced novices' comprehension, with their comprehension scores matching those of law students ...

The ubiquitous label ‘some assembly required’ signals the appearance of instructions for assembly procedures. These instructions come in various formats, some of which may be more effective than others. Previous research has demonstrated advantages for multimedia as compared to single-format presentations. The current study sought to outline the cognitive processes contributing to this advantage. Specifically, two experiments examined the working memory and source monitoring processes involved with remembering procedural instructions presented in three different formats. Participants learned procedural instructions while undertaking one of a variety of selective interference tasks targeting working memory subcomponents. Results, while supporting a multimedia advantage for ...

The ubiquitous label ‘some assembly required’ signals the appearance of instructions for assembly procedures. These instructions come in various formats, some of which may be more effective than others. Previous research has demonstrated advantages for multimedia as compared to single-format presentations. The current study sought to outline the cognitive processes contributing to this advantage. Specifically, two experiments examined the working memory and source monitoring processes involved with remembering procedural instructions presented in three different formats. Participants learned procedural instructions while undertaking one of a variety of selective interference tasks targeting working memory subcomponents. Results, while supporting a multimedia advantage for learning, ...

Cues to text structure have been proposed to operate a number of different levels and it has been suggested that lower-level factors (e.g., word decoding) are more critical to reader performance than are higher-level factors (e.g., paragraph and text structure). The current study involved presenting texts in their base form and with cues to coherence at two levels at the word and paragraph level removed. These manipulations were performed on technical texts at two levels of familiarity and were presented to technical readers. Tests of recall, recognition, and problem-solving revealed that while removal of cues to local coherence did produce ...

Australia adopted a simplified style of legal drafting in 1997 in order to reduce the costs of tax compliance. Psychological costs are one aspect of compliance costs which has previously received little attention from researchers. This article reports on research undertaken to determine the impact of simplified legal drafting on the psychological costs of compliance. The research was conducted using a mixed method approach which included a problem-solving experiment, coding of non-verbal behaviour, self reports and a focus group. Subjects included both novice and expert users, with the experts being tax practitioners or technical staff from the Australian Taxation Office. ...

Two experiments investigated learning outcomes and comprehension processes when students learned about the heart and circulatory system using (a) text only, (b) text with simplified diagrams designed to highlight important structural relations, or (c) text with more detailed diagrams reflecting a more accurate representation. Experiment 1 found that both types of diagrams supported mental model development, but simplified diagrams best supported factual learning. Experiment 2 replicated learning effects from Experiment 1 and tested the influence of diagrams on novices’ comprehension processes. Protocol analyses indicated that both types of diagrams supported inference generation and reduced comprehension errors, but simplified diagrams most strongly supported information ...

Two experiments investigated learning outcomes and comprehension processes when students learned about the heart and circulatory system using (a) text only, (b) text with simplified diagrams designed to highlight important structural relations, or (c) text with more detailed diagrams reflecting a more accurate representation. Experiment 1 found that both types of diagrams supported mental model development, but simplified diagrams best supported factual learning. Experiment 2 replicated learning effects from Experiment 1 and tested the influence of diagrams on novices’ comprehension processes. Protocol analyses indicated that both types of diagrams supported inference generation and reduced comprehension errors, but simplified diagrams most strongly supported information ...

There has been a considerable suggestion in the literature that syntactic adaptation of a text would simplify it. This empirical study determined that the complexity of the syntax does not significantly affect the level of reading comprehension. While a complete conceptual and lexical analysis may be necessary for reading comprehension, a thorough syntactic analysis is not. This should be true for both expert and novice readers in a particular professional field, herein computer science.Using American (L1 or E1, English as a native language) and Dutch (L2 or E2, English as a second, nonnative language) computer science and humanities majors reading ...

Contrary to popular belief, little systematic evaluation has been undertaken of how well public information signs convey their intended message. The application of a proposed evaluation procedure, involving an initial Recognition Test and a subsequent Recall Test, to a set of occupational safety signs is reported. Respondents comprised migrants and native-born Australians attending adult literacy classes, including a group of recently-arrived Vietnamese. Despite inter-group differences in the total number of signs correctly identified on both Recognition and Recall Tests, the same signs gave rise to difficulty for all groups. The sources of difficulty are discussed in terms of distinctiveness of referents, ...

In 2 experiments, participants read narratives containing a color term that was mentioned either within the scope of an explicit negative or not, and with the described situation being such that the color was either present or not. Accessibility of the color term was measured by means of a probe-recognition task either 500 ms (Experiment 1) or 1,500 ms (Experiment 2) after participants read the sentence mentioning color. After the 500-ms delay, the accessibility of the color term was influenced by the structure of the sentence. After the 1,500-ms delay, the accessibility was influenced by the content of the described ...