Schraw, G. (1998). Processing and recall differences among seductive details. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(1), 3-12.

Schraw, G.

1998

Schraw, G. (1998). Processing and recall differences among seductive details. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(1), 3-12.

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Three experiments examined processing and recall differences associated with 2 different types of seductive details (i.e., highly interesting, but unimportant, text segments). Experiment 1 provided evidence of 2 different types of seductive details: those that are less interesting when read in isolation (context dependent) and those that are equally interesting in context or isolation (context independent). Experiment 2 found that context-dependent seductive details took longer to read and were recalled better than main ideas. Context-independent seductive details were recalled as well as context-dependent seductive details, but did not require more reading time than main ideas. Experiment 3 found that including seductive details did not interfere with overall story recall or recall of main ideas. Suggestions are made for future research that would enhance a theory of seductive details.

These findings indicate that including seductive details did not have any deleterious effect on recall of remaining text information. There was no significant difference in total story recall in the between-group comparison nor was there any difference among groups with respect to recall of main ideas. In contrast, there was a significant difference in recall among the context-dependent, context-independent and main idea segments in the within-group comparison using the recall scores from the 12-seductive detail version of the text. This supports the conclusion that seductive details do not interfere with recall of text information.

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