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The objective was to determine the influence of medicine labels incorporating pictograms on the understanding of instructions and on adherence. Eighty-seven Xhosa participants attending an outpatient clinic who had been prescribed a short course of antibiotics were randomly allocated to either a control group (41 participants given text-only labels), or an experimental group (46 participants given text + pictogram labels). All participants had a maximum of 10 years of formal schooling. Follow-up home visits were conducted after 3–5 days to assess understanding of instructions and to evaluate adherence. A high adherence of greater than 90% was found for 54% of ...

There is a growing need for balanced drug information customized for special target groups such as children [Food and Drug Administration. Prescription Drug Product Labeling; Medication Guide Requirements; Proposed Rule. Part VII. Department of Health and Human Services, 21 CRF Part 201, et al. Federal Register 1995;60:44182–252; Dickinson D, Raynor DK, Duman M. Patient information leaflets for medicines: using consumer testing to determine the most effective design. Patient Educ Couns 2001;43:147–59]. Pictograms are one aid that may be used to make information easier to read and understand. The aim of this study was to test whether children understand pictograms developed by the United States Pharmacopeia ...

Research suggests that much of the available health education literature requires a level of reading ability that makes it inaccessible to a large proportion of the population in greatest need of health information. The present study tested the value of illustrations and a narrative text style as means of improving the readability of a brochure designed to provide information on cervical cancer and condyloma. Two versions of the brochure were designed, one that had only text presented as simple sentences in bullet‐type format (SMOG reading level score of 7.7), and a second version that had somewhat more difficult text formatted ...

Purpose: We investigated whether patient-centered instructions for chronic heart failure medications increase comprehension and memory for medication information in older adults diagnosed with chronic heart failure. Design and Methods: Patient-centered instructions for familiar and unfamiliar medications were compared with instructions for the same medications from a chain pharmacy (standard pharmacy instructions). Thirty-two adults (age, M = 63.8) read and answered questions about each instruction, recalled medication information (free recall), and then answered questions from memory (cued recall). Results: Patient-centered instructions were better recalled and understood more quickly than the standard instructions. Instructions for the familiar medications also were better recalled. Patient-centered instructions were understood more ...

An animated concept map represents verbal information in a node-link diagram that changes over time. The goals of the experiment were to evaluate the instructional effects of presenting an animated concept map concurrently with semantically equivalent spoken narration. The study used a 2x2 factorial design in which an animation factor (animated vs. static) was crossed with a representation factor (concept map vs. text). Students (N=140) were randomly assigned to study one of four presentations on the human nervous system. The dependent measures were tests of free recall, knowledge and transfer. The concept map groups significantly outperformed the text groups on ...

This study examined whether reading a refutational or non-refutational text would induce different cognitive processing, as revealed by eye-movement analyses. Unlike a standard expository text, a refutational text acknowledges a reader’s alternative conceptions about a topic, refutes them, and then introduces scientific conceptions as viable alternatives. Forty university students read one or the other type of text about the Phenomenon of the tides. All had alternative conceptions about the topic. Findings showed that at post-test (off-line measure) refutational text readers learned more than non-refutational text readers. Outcomes regarding indices of visual behavior (on-line measures) during reading revealed that refutational text ...

This study extends current research on the refutation text effect by investigating it in learners with different levels of working memory capacity. The purpose is to outline the link between online processes (revealed by eye fixation indices) and offline outcomes in these learners. In science education, unlike a standard text, a refutation text acknowledges readers’ alternative conceptions about a topic, refutes them, and presents scientific conceptions as viable alternatives. Lower and higher memory span university students with alternative conceptions about the topic read either a refutation or a non-refutation text about tides. Off-line measures of learning revealed that both groups ...

Many writing guides list constructions that writers should avoid, including passives, nominalisations and long complex words and sentences. This study presents an eye-tracking experiment that compared the reading of such supposedly problematic constructions with the reading of their recommended parallel versions in four different Danish LSP texts. While a range of control predictors, including the length of the target constructions and their position in the texts, had significant effects on reading time, there was no effect of whether a target construction followed or opposed the advice given in writing guides. This suggests that, in themselves, the supposed problem constructions are ...

There has been considerable debate about the relative merits of tabular and graphical presentation styles but experimental results are contradictory. One source of these inconsistencies might lie in mismatches between spatial/symbolic tasks and symbolic/spatial presentations. A comparative evaluation of tabular and graphical presentation styles for information retrieval search results was conducted, where spatial or symbolic data retrieval tasks were matched with appropriate spatial or symbolic data presentations. However, when sixty participants performed ten presentation-matched information retrieval tasks, no performance advantages were observed. We suggest that an additional dimension of data relevance to task takes precedence over the match between task ...

The purpose of the study was to explore students’ selection of information strategies in a task-oriented reading situation. 72 secondary school students read two texts and answered six questions per text, three of which were manipulated to induce a misleading matching between the wording of the question and distracting pieces of information in the text. The reading and question-answering were presented with the software Read&Answer. We analyzed how skilled and less-skilled comprehenders were attracted to the distracting pieces of information and how this affected reading patterns and task outcomes. Skilled comprehenders scored higher and were able to discard the distracting ...