Moravcsik, J. E., & Healy, A. F. (1998). Highlighting important words leads to poorer comprehension. In A. F. Healy, & L. E. J. Bourne (Eds.), Foreign language learning: Psycholinguistic studies on training and retention (pp. 259-272). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Moravcsik, J.; Healy, A.

1998

Moravcsik, J. E., & Healy, A. F. (1998). Highlighting important words leads to poorer comprehension. In A. F. Healy, & L. E. J. Bourne (Eds.), Foreign language learning: Psycholinguistic studies on training and retention (pp. 259-272). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

2

Examined whether placing important words in boldface affects comprehension. In 2 experiments, a total of 120 college students read passages and timed themselves, answered multiple-choice comprehension questions, and produced recall summaries. Highlighting important words produced worse performance on comprehension questions, reading times, meaningful units recalled, and meaningful units recalled per unit reading time than did highlighting all words or no words. Similar patterns of results were found when participants were specifically instructed that the highlighted words were important as when they were not so instructed. These results are explained by the proposal that providing important words leads Ss to do less active processing of the passage and leads them to ignore function words that are essential for appreciating syntactic structure.

Highlighting important words produced worse performance on comprehension questions, reading times, meaningful units recalled, and meaningful units recalled per unit reading time than did highlighting all words or no words. Similar patterns of results were found when participants were specifically instructed that the highlighted words were important as when they were not instructed.

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