Potelle, H., & Rouet, J. (2003). Effects of content representation and readers? prior knowledge on the comprehension of hypertext. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 58(3), 327-345.

Potelle, H.;Rouet, J.

2003

Potelle, H., & Rouet, J. (2003). Effects of content representation and readers? prior knowledge on the comprehension of hypertext. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 58(3), 327-345.

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This study investigated the role of various types of content representation devices on the comprehension of an expository hypertext. We hypothesized that hierarchical representations, but not network representations, may help low prior knowledge students organize their representation of the text contents. Forty-seven students with low or high prior knowledge in Social Psychology were asked to read a hypertext using one of three content representations: a hierarchical map, a network map and an alphabetic list. Then, the participants performed a multiple choice comprehension task, a summary task and a concept map drawing task. The hierarchical map improved comprehension for the low knowledge participants at the global, but not at the local level. There was no effect of content representation on the comprehension of high prior knowledge students. We discuss the implications of these results for a theory of the comprehension processes involved in reading hypertext.

Whether in a print or electronic formats, complex documents usually come with some kind of content representation. Some representations (eg hierarchical maps) emphasize the subordination relationship between topics and subtopics, whereas others (eg network maps) emphasize semantic relationships. We found that the hierarchical map improved low knowledge participants' answers to mactrostructural, but not to microstructural questions. Moreover, the hierarchical map increased the number of concepts in low knowledge participans' summaries and their reconstruction of the hypertext's topic structure. Contrary to our expectations, however, the network map did not improve high knowledge participants' performance.

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