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This study investigated two alternative theoretical explanations for the effect of concreteness on text recall: dual coding and context availability. Studies by Marschark (1985) and Ransdell and Fischer (1989) have been cited as support for the context availability view but these studies produced mixed results regarding concreteness effects in the free recall of fictitious biographical paragraphs. The present study extended this research by using (a) different materials adapted from naturally occurring texts about actual historical figures, (b) ratings for familiarity, and (c) more stringent experimental controls. Subjects were undergraduate students: 40 in Experiment 1 (between-subjects design) and 24 in Experiment ...

This study investigated two alternative theoretical explanations for the effect of concreteness on text recall: dual coding and context availability. Studies by Marschark (1985) and Ransdell and Fischer (1989) have been cited as support for the context availability view but these studies produced mixed results regarding concreteness effects in the free recall of fictitious biographical paragraphs. The present study extended this research by using (a) different materials adapted from naturally occurring texts about actual historical figures, (b) ratings for familiarity, and (c) more stringent experimental controls. Subjects were undergraduate students: 40 in Experiment 1 (between-subjects design) and 24 in Experiment ...

The surprisal of a word on a probabilistic grammar constitutes a promising complexity metric for human sentence comprehension difficulty. Using two different grammar types, surprisal is shown to have an effect on fixation durations and regression probabilities in a sample of German readers’ eye movements, the Potsdam Sentence Corpus. A linear mixed-effects model was used to quantify the effect of surprisal while taking into account unigram frequency and bigram frequency (transitional probability), word length and empirically-derived predictability itself. This work thus demonstrates the importance of including parsing costs as a predictor of comprehension difficulty in models of reading, and suggests ...

We present evidence that the comprehension of illustrated text makes use of the visuospatial sketchpad component of working memory. The results from three experiments demonstrate that the comprehending of texts that are accompanied by pictures interferes with the performance of a spatial short-term memory task more than does the comprehending of texts that have no pictures. A fourth experiment demonstrates that the interference is found only when there is a requirement to comprehend the text; that is, the simple presentation of the texts and their pictures did not degrade performance on the spatial task. Finally, we show that the comprehension of ...

Printed cancer information often is written at or beyond high school reading levels, despite lower average literacy abilities of the public. The objectives of this exploratory study were twofold: (1) to evaluate older adults' comprehension of breast (BC), prostate (PC), and colorectal (CC) cancer information; and (2) to determine if comprehension of BC, PC, and CC information varies according to text readability. Comprehension of printed cancer resources was evaluated with 44 community-dwelling older adults using the Cloze procedure and recall questions. Participants' comprehension scores were compared with Simple Measure of Gobbledegook (SMOG) readability scores. Overall, older adults had satisfactory comprehension ...

The new European readability guideline draft for package inserts recommends a minimal font size of 12 pt and 16 to 20 pt for medicines which are more frequently used by visually impaired patients. However, research results illustrate that smaller font sizes are easier to read. Therefore, the written readability test was used to investigate how font size influenced the information locatability and comprehensibility. Fifteen questions focusing on the package insert contents and 17 questions focusing on participants' opinions were compiled. The study examined one package insert available on the German medicines market and its optimized model version. Both were printed ...

Objective Statistical health risk information has proved notoriously confusing and difficult to understand. While past research indicates that presenting risk information in a frequency format is superior to relative risk and probability formats, the optimal characteristics of frequency formats are still unclear. The aim of this study is to determine the features of 1000 person frequency diagrams (pictographs) which result in the greatest speed and accuracy of graphical perception. Methods Participants estimated the difference in chance of survival when taking or not taking Drug A, on a pictograph format, varying by mode (one-graph/two-graph), direction (vertical/horizontal), and shading (shaded/unshaded), and their preferences for the ...

In 5 experiments, we investigated conditions under which readers access distant information. Participants read texts containing 2 episodes; the first of which described a goal that was satisfied or unsatisfied. Following the 2nd episode, participants read a statement that reinstated some part of the goal context. Experiments 1 through 3 demonstrated that reactivation of unsatisfied goal information depended on the type of original goal context and whether it was fully reinstated. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that, when the context was associated with both episodes, reinstatement of goal information from the distant target episode was successful only when the context ...

It is usually recommended to start a text by providing readers with an overview of its content (the topics discussed) and of its structure (the relations between the topics). However, in a recent study, Murray and McGlone (1997) reported that readers benefit from topic information but not from structural information provided in an introductory paragraph. In the present experiments, the authors ask whether these conclusions generalize to more complex texts, in which structural information is more important. Two experiments, using a text with a complex hierarchical structure, replicated previous results on reading times. Experiment 2 also permitted to rule out ...

In 5 experiments, we investigated conditions under which readers access distant information. Participants read texts containing 2 episodes; the first of which described a goal that was satisfied or unsatisfied. Following the 2nd episode, participants read a statement that reinstated some part of the goal context. Experiments 1 through 3 demonstrated that reactivation of unsatisfied goal information depended on the type of original goal context and whether it was fully reinstated. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that, when the context was associated with both episodes, reinstatement of goal information from the distant target episode was successful only when the context ...