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Increasing readability of written cancer prevention information is a fundamental step to increasing awareness and knowledge of cancer screening. Instead of readability formulas, the present study focused on text cohesion, which is the degree to which the text content ties together. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of text cohesion on reading times, comprehension, and retention of colorectal cancer prevention information. English-speaking adults (50 years of age or older) were recruited from local communities. Participants were randomly assigned to read colorectal cancer prevention subtopics presented at 2 levels of text cohesion: from higher cohesion to lower ...

Four experiments tested a hypothesized function of signaling devices, namely, to communicate information about text organization. Experiments 1 and 2 compared headings that communicated the hierarchical organization of text topics with headings that did not communicate the hierarchical organization. Signaling organization led to more complete and accurate outlines of a text. Experiment 3 compared headings that communicated the sequential organization of text topics with headings than did not communicate the organization. Signaling organization led to faster text search. Experiment 4 compared headings that emphasized the sequential organization of topics with headings that emphasized their hierarchical organization. In this comparison, sequential ...

Four experiments tested a hypothesized function of signaling devices, namely, to communicate information about text organization. Experiments 1 and 2 compared headings that communicated the hierarchical organization of text topics with headings that did not communicate the hierarchical organization. Signaling organization led to more complete and accurate outlines of a text. Experiment 3 compared headings that communicated the sequential organization of text topics with headings than did not communicate the organization. Signaling organization led to faster text search. Experiment 4 compared headings that emphasized the sequential organization of topics with headings that emphasized their hierarchical organization. In this comparison, sequential ...

Memory studies utilizing long-term repetition priming have generally demonstrated that priming is greater for low-frequency than for high-frequency words and that this effect persists if words intervene between the prime and the target. In contrast, word-recognition studies utilizing masked short-term repetition priming have typically shown that the magnitude of repetition priming does not differ as a function of word frequency and does not persist across intervening words. We conducted an eyetracking-while-reading experiment to determine which of these patterns more closely resembles the relationship between frequency and repetition during the natural reading of a text. Frequency was manipulated using proper names ...

Poor health literacy, or the ability to interpret and make judgments about one’s health, affects the effectiveness of healthcare services and people’s quality of life. We explored design principles on how to design visually salient, legible and interpretable medical graphics to promote comprehension and recall of electronic medical diagnostic information, an essential component of personal health records, for populations with limited health literacy. We first conducted a two-stage investigation to confirm that people can comprehend pictorial representations of medical conditions and treatments and improve their health literacy. We then designed a set of medical diagnostics graphics, based on the principles ...

The present research examined the impact of technology on reading comprehension. While previous research has examined memory for text, and yielded mixed results of the impact technology has on one’s ability to remember what they have read, the reading literature has not yet examined comprehension. In comparing paper, computers, and e-readers, results from this study indicated that these three different presentation modes do not differentially affect comprehension of narrative or expository text. Additionally, readers were not consistently compensating for difficulties with comprehension by engaging in different reading behaviors when presented with text in different formats. These results suggest that reading ...

This study investigated the online process of reading and the offline learning from an illustrated science text. The authors examined the effects of using a concrete or abstract picture to illustrate a text and adopted eye-tracking methodology to trace text and picture processing. They randomly assigned 59 eleventh-grade students to 3 reading conditions: (a) text only; (b) text with a concrete illustration; and (c) text with an abstract illustration in a pretest, immediate, and delayed posttest design. Results showed that the text illustrated by either the concrete or the abstract picture led to better learning than did the text alone. ...

This work examined how adjunct displays influence college readers’ moment- by-moment processing of text and the products of reading, using reading time (Experiments 1 & 2), and think-aloud methodologies (Experiment 3). Participants did or did not study a diagram before reading a text. Overall, the reading time data, think-aloud data, and recall data were consistent with the no-increased-effort hypothesis, which states that a diagram can facilitate comprehension, although readers may not engage in more effortful online processing. These data suggest that studying a diagram before reading can improve memory for an expository text without necessarily increasing online effort. ...

This work examined how adjunct displays influence college readers’ moment- by-moment processing of text and the products of reading, using reading time (Experiments 1 & 2), and think-aloud methodologies (Experiment 3). Participants did or did not study a diagram before reading a text. Overall, the reading time data, think-aloud data, and recall data were consistent with the no-increased-effort hypothesis, which states that a diagram can facilitate comprehension, although readers may not engage in more effortful online processing. These data suggest that studying a diagram before reading can improve memory for an expository text without necessarily increasing online effort. ...

Recent evidence indicates that older adults (aged 65+) are more disrupted by removing interword spaces than young adults (aged 18 – 30). However, it is not known whether older readers also show greater sensitivity to the more subtle changes to this spacing that frequently occur during normal reading. In the present study the eye movements of young and older adults were examined when reading texts for which interword spacing was normal, condensed to half its normal size or expanded to 1.5 times its normal size. Although these changes in interword spacing affected eye movement behaviour, this influence did not differ ...