Derry, S. J. (1984). Effects of an organizer on memory for prose. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76(1), 98-107.

Derry, S.

1984

Derry, S. J. (1984). Effects of an organizer on memory for prose. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76(1), 98-107.

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112 undergraduates read a literature text preceded by either a comparative advance organizer or a placebo introduction. Three hypotheses regarding the interactive effects of the organizer treatment and reasoning skills were tested: the assimilation, the schema plus correction, and the assimilation plus correction hypotheses. Findings favor the assimilation plus correction view, which holds that schema-implied text units are assimilated and obscured in the final text encoding, whereas ideas representing unexpected, schema-modifying information are enhanced. The dominant treatment effect was assimilatory loss of detail associated with implied information. Positive effects on schema-modifying information were observed for Ss with good reasoning skills, as assessed by the Diagramming Relationships and Inference Tests from the Kit of Factor-Referenced Cognitive Tests. Possible explanantions for the results are discussed in terms of reconstructive views of recall, adaptive learning and changes in semantic memory representation, and perceived structural importance of target ideas.

Findings favor the assimilation plus correction view, which holds that schema-implied text units are assimilated and obscured in the final text encoding, whereas ideas representing unexpected, schema-modifying information are enhanced. The dominant treatment effect was assimilatory loss of detail associated with implied information. Positive effects on schema-modifying information were observed for Ss with good reasoning skills.

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