Goldman, S. R., Saul, E., & Cote, N. (1995). Paragraphing, reader, and task effects on discourse comprehension. Discourse Processes, 20(3), 273-305.
Goldman, S.; Saul, E.; Cote, N.
1995
Goldman, S. R., Saul, E., & Cote, N. (1995). Paragraphing, reader, and task effects on discourse comprehension. Discourse Processes, 20(3), 273-305.
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This study examined interactions among text, task, and reader factors in 2 experiments with a total of 64 undergraduates that looked at the role of paragraphing, a surface text feature, on the identification of and memory for main ideas as compared to elaborative information in expository passages. In the coincident paragraphing condition, main ideas of the passage were paragraph initial. In the conflicting condition, elaborations of the main ideas were paragraph initial. Although paragraphing identified these elaboration sentences as main ideas, the content information conflicted with that designation. The paragraphing manipulation had a greater effect on the differentiation of main ideas and elaborations when passage content was less familiar. The major difference between the recall and the summary task was that the likelihood of including elaborations was greater in the recall task.
The results of these studies challenge the algorithmic hypothesis that being the first sentence of a paragraph automatically gives a sentence an advantage, with readers believing it is a main idea. Rather, readers treated paragraph-initial status heuristically and in interaction with the semantics of the text and their own prior knowledge to determine the main ideas for these passages. Processing measures in both studies showed highly similar patterns of effects. Paragraph-initial status increased the frequency with which elaboration statement were accessed up to the level for main points. In contrast, main-point access was unaffected by paragraph-initial status. Thus, even when main points occurred as the second sentence in the paragraph, readers were able to differentiate them from elaborations This was done on the basis of the semantic information in the text in interaction with readers’ prior knowledge.
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