McNamara, D. S., Kintsch, E., Songer, N. B., & Kintsch, W. (1996). Are good texts always better? interactions of text coherence, background knowledge, and levels of understanding in learning from text. Cognition and Instruction, 14(1), 1-43.

McNamara, D.; Kintsch, E.; Butler Songer, N.; Kintsch, W.

1996

McNamara, D. S., Kintsch, E., Songer, N. B., & Kintsch, W. (1996). Are good texts always better? interactions of text coherence, background knowledge, and levels of understanding in learning from text. Cognition and Instruction, 14(1), 1-43.

1

Two studies are reported that explore the role of text coherence in the comprehension of science texts, using the construction-integration model of text comprehension. Experiment 1 utilized free recall, written questions, & key-word sorting by junior high students (N = 36, aged 11-15), & found that globally coherent text is most advantageous. Experiment 2 utilized the same method (N = 56, aged 11-15) to explore interactions among local & global texts; it was found that those with little prior knowledge of a text benefit most from a clear text, but that those with prior knowledge can gain greater benefit from a less coherent text than those without it.

The results show that the revision resulted in better overall recall, but that this improvement was primarily a consequence of the better recall of macropositions. Greater improvement in the recall of macropositions than of micropropositions was expected for the revised version, since most f the revisions were made at the level of the macrostructure.

36

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