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This study explored how the structure of written news affects men and women differently in terms of cognition. In a 2 (Structure) x 2 (Story) x 2 (Sex) mixed design, participants read two inverted pyramid and two chronological news stories, each on a different topic. Dependent measures included secondary task reaction times (STRTs), cued recall, recognition accuracy, and text comprehension. Women had slower reaction times than men across stories, but a significant interaction showed their use of cognitive resources was less affected by variations in story structure. These results are discussed in the context of a comprehensibility interpretation of the ...

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate alternative procedures for improving the understanding of research consent disclosures by persons who have mental illness. Methods: Three groups participated in the study: persons with schizophrenia (N=79), persons with depression (N=82), and a healthy control group (N=80). The participants were guided through an informed consent process in which two factors were manipulated. One was the structure of the disclosure form; either a typical disclosure form involving standard dense text was used, or a graphically enhanced form was used. The other was the interpersonal process: the presence or absence of a third-party ...

Objective To examine whether a consent document modified to conform with the federal guidelines for readability and processability would result in greater parental understanding compared with a standard form. Design Randomized clinical study. Setting The preoperative waiting area of a larger tertiary care children's hospital. Participants A total of 305 parents of children scheduled for minor elective surgical procedures. Interventions Parents were randomized to receive information about a clinical study in 1 of 4 ways: (1) standard consent form alone, (2) standard consent form with verbal disclosure, (3) modified form alone (standard form modified to meet the federal guidelines for ...

In the present study the effectiveness of explicitness in warnings provided with children's products was investigated. Unsafe use of children's products leads to many accidents. One way to reduce the number of accidents is to provide products with adequate warnings. A consistent finding in the literature is that a consumer's responsiveness to warnings is affected by perceived hazardousness, which in turn is affected by explicit warnings. A warning is explicit when it informs a consumer on (1) what to do/avoid (2) the product-related hazards (3) the consequences of unsafe behaviour in terms of injuries. Subjects were randomly assigned to one ...

The main focus in this chapter is on the effects of declarative information in software manuals. Subjects in three different user situations worked with a simple and a complex spreadsheet task and a version of the click and read manual that either did or did not contain declarative information. The results of this experiment indicate that declarative information is used spontaneously by users who have a free choice. Those users are not harmed by using declarative information in any way. Users profit from declarative information when they work with the software again on later occassions, and they become better at ...

The main focus in this chapter is on the effects of different arrangements of procedural and declarative information in software manuals. The effects of information arrangement on task performance and reasoning were investigated by means of a 3 x 4 factorial design with user situation and manual version as between-subjects factor. The results indicate that information arrangement can affect which information is selected first, but does not have an effect on the using time of information, delayed task performance, reasoning or factual knowledge. ...

The goal of this study was to compare 2 approaches for improving instructional text. The first was based on the procedure created by B. K. Britton and S. Gulgoz (1991) as derived from W. Kintsch and T. A. van Dijk's theory (1978). It emphasized the reduction of the reader's inferential activity. We created a second method that was inspired by theories of narrative comprehension (P. van den Broek, 1990; A. C. Graesser, M. Singer, & T. Trabasso, 1994). We oriented it toward triggering causal inferences in the reader. Alternative versions of an original passage on history were elaborated for each ...

Many textbook writers are searching for ways to add interest to expository text. One method is to include highly interesting but unimportant details, which have been called seductive details. The purpose of this study was to investigate how interest and importance interact to affect the strategy use and recall of skilled readers. Two experiments were conducted. The first examined the reading times and recall of readers for information that varied in interest and importance. The second was an interview study in which readers were asked to describe the strategies they used to study text excerpts of high or low interest ...

Many textbook writers are searching for ways to add interest to expository text. One method is to include highly interesting but unimportant details, which have been called seductive details. The purpose of this study was to investigate how interest and importance interact to affect the strategy use and recall of skilled readers. Two experiments were conducted. The first examined the reading times and recall of readers for information that varied in interest and importance. The second was an interview study in which readers were asked to describe the strategies they used to study text excerpts of high or low interest ...

Hypertext research results suggest that building a correct representation of the hypertext structure enables users to navigate effectively within the text. Therefore, text comprehension processes involved in hypertext reading should be investigated. In an experimental study, we differentiated the text structure from the dimensions of a postulated coherent situation model in order to compare them. Three electronic text versions, varying in navigational facility, and text structure visualization were compared with respect to orientation, navigation, eye movements, mental representation of text structure and content (situation model). Results demonstrate that when text structure visualization was unavailable, a reorganization of readers' representations of ...