Britton, B. K., Van Dusen, L., Gulgoz, S., & Glynn, S. M. (1989). Instructional texts rewritten by five expert teams: Revisions and retention improvements. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(2), 226-239.

Britton, B.;Van Dusen, L.;Gulgoz, S.;Glynn, S.

1989

Britton, B. K., Van Dusen, L., Gulgoz, S., & Glynn, S. M. (1989). Instructional texts rewritten by five expert teams: Revisions and retention improvements. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(2), 226-239.

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700 undergraduates were tested in 3 experiments on original or rewritten versions of 52 instructional texts about Army job tasks, general science, philosophy, and history. 5 experts had rewritten various sets of the texts and stated hypotheses about the efficacious features of their revisions. We tested their hypotheses and several others. Recall and recognition tests were given immediately and after a 24hr delay. Results showed that revisions made by 3 of the 5 experts improved retention of text information. The kind and number of revisions and improvements varied across the text sets. Most expert hypotheses were not supported, and they made many revisions they were declaratively unaware of. Some of our hypotheses about the revision features were supported, but different features were effective for different sets of texts. It was concluded that some experts have effective knowledge about improving instructional text, but it exists primarily in procedural form.

The results showed that the college composition instructors' revision was recalled significantly better than the original, but the other revisions were not. This pattern of results supports a retrieval hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, the information was encoded and stored equally well in all the versions, but was more easily retrievable from the composition instructors' revision.

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