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When students read their school text, they may make a coherent mental representation of it that contains coherence relations between the text segments. The construction of such a representation is a prerequisite for learning from texts. This article focuses on the influence of connectives (therefore, furthermore) and layout (continuous placement of sentences vs. each sentence beginning a new line) on the dynamics of the reading process as well as the quality of students’ mental representation. The results shed light on the cognitive reading processes of students in secondary education, which allows us to explain effects of text features on off-line ...

This article focuses on the influence of connectives (because, so) and layout (continuous placement of sentences versus each sentence beginning on a new line) on the quality of students’ mental representations. By using multiple comprehension tasks, we found that cohesive text features have different effects on each facet of deeper text comprehension. On local comprehension tasks (i.e. bridging inference questions), all students performed better after reading history texts containing connectives than after reading texts without these markers. On global comprehension tasks (i.e. sorting tasks), pre-vocational students performed better when coherence relations were marked, regardless of layout, while pre-un iversity students did ...

This study investigates the cognitive abilities involved in hypertext learning and design approaches that can help users. We examined the effects of two types of high-level content organizers – a graphic spatial map and an alphabetical list – on readers’ memory for hypertext structure. In the control condition, a simple “home” page with no navigational aid was offered. Subjects were asked to read the hypertext with the purpose of learning the content, but in the post test phase they also had to recall the layout of nodes and links. Memory for links and page places varied as a function of condition. When ...

Previous studies have shown that hypertext users generate a mental representation of the hypertext structure and content. This study examines how information organisation in hypertext affects users' comprehension of the hypertext structure and content of the text. In a 2 × 2 factorial design text interconnectedness (low vs. high) and coherence (coherent vs. incoherent) were manipulated. Users' mental representations were accessed by various tests such as card sorting, summary writing and questionnaires. Results showed that participants' representation of hypertext structure and content was better under the coherent than under the incoherent condition. Interconnectedness did not have an effect on users' representation. Recommendations ...

In the last decades, the Internet has developed into a proliferating and flourishing source of information. This phenomenon requires complex pieces of writing to be presented in a way that expedites their efficient processing. This paper presents an experiment studying how text presentation affects reading efficiency and text recall. We compared different types of text presentations - scrolling and text pagination with and without callouts. A word recognition task was used to assess the recognition of a presented text. Discrepancies in reading efficiency were apparent in the results obtained from the eye tracking data; namely, we noted that scrolling is ...

BACKGROUND: Graphs are often used in medical communication, both in clinical practice and health management. They can help the processing of quantitative information but may also contribute to drawing wrong conclusions. The aim of the survey is to study the graphical perception of the data at the management level and its possible effects, showing how some criteria of appraisal of a phenomenon are influenced by the graphical format. METHODS: One hundred and five medical doctors and health direction professionals of hospitals in Naples, Rome, Siena and Turin were interviewed. Four different graphs or table related to the same hypothetical data ...

Reading on the World Wide Web has become a daily habit nowadays. This can be seen from the perspective of changes on readers’ tendency to be more interested in materials from the internet, than the printed media. Taking these developments into account, it is important for web-based instructional designers to choose the appropriate font, especially for long blocks of text, in order to enhance the level of students’ readability. Accordingly, this study aims to evaluate the effects of serif and san serif font in the category of screen fonts and print fonts, in terms of Malay text readability on websites. ...

To be effective, instructional animations should avoid causing high extraneous cognitive load imposed by the high attentional requirements of selecting and processing relevant elements. In accordance with the attention-guiding principle (Bétrancourt, 2005), a study was carried out concerning the impact of cueing on cognitive load and comprehension of animations which depicted a dynamic process in a neurobiology domain. Cueing consisted of zooming in important information at each step of the process. Thirty-six undergraduate psychology students were exposed to an animation three times. Half of the participants received an animation without cueing while the other half received the same animation with ...

In the current study we examined the complex interactions of instructional context, text properties, and reader characteristics during comprehension. College students were tasked with the goal of reading for study versus entertainment (instructional context) while thinking-aloud about four different expository text structures (text properties). Working memory also was assessed (reader characteristics). Reading goals and working memory interacted to influence paraphrasing and non-coherence processes when thinking aloud. Reading goals, working memory, and text structure all interacted to influence text-based inferences. Text structure also influenced knowledge-based inferences. Post-reading recall was highest for those with the instructional goal of reading for study (compared ...

Objective: This study investigated the effects of personalized audiovisual information in addition to text on website satisfaction and recall of cancer-related online information in older lung cancer patients. Methods: An experiment using a 3 (condition: text only vs. text with nonpersonalized video vs. text with personalized video) by 2 (age patient: younger [<65 yrs] vs. older [>65 yrs]) between-subjects factorial design was conducted. Patients were randomly assigned to one of the three information conditions stratified by age group. Results: Patients were more satisfied with the comprehensibility, attractiveness, and the emotional support from the website when information was presented as text with ...