Leon, J. A. (1997). The effects of headlines and summaries on news comprehension and recall. Reading and Writing, 9(2), 85-106.
Leon, J.
1997
Leon, J. A. (1997). The effects of headlines and summaries on news comprehension and recall. Reading and Writing, 9(2), 85-106.
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In two experiments, we attempted to analyze the effects of newspaper article headlines and summaries on final comprehension and recall. During the first experiment, the participants consisted of 117 high school students from the 9th grade, 68 from the 11th grade, 79 first year Psychology students from the Autonoma University of Madrid and 66 fifth year Journalism students from the Complutense University of Madrid. The subjects were randomly required to read a news report in one of the following experimental conditions: (1) the whole news article (headline, summary and text), (2) the headline and text, (3) the summary and text, and (4), the text only. The data from immediate and delayed free recall tasks were recorded. The results showed that the structure of the news article did not influence the recall and that there were differences among groups in the amount and quality of recall. The headline and the summary modified by the use of macrostructural criteria constituted additional elements introduced into the second experiment to provide a contrast with the original headline and summary. The results showed that an improvement in article recall did occur with the modified version in comparison with the original version. These two experiments have confirmed that the aims and criteria of journalists differ from those held by the authors of scientific texts and question whether the reading strategies applied are the same in both cases.
As expected, we detected significant differences in the information obtained from the groups of readers, the university groups retaining most information. The results are similar to those obtained in earlier studies. On the other hand, the results obtained with the Type of News Presentation variable were clearly different from those expected. In this sense, the possible influence of the headline and the summary on the subject’s memory completely disappeared, since no significant differences were observed among the different experimental conditions present in the study. This absence of significant differences can be observed in both a collective analysis of the group data and also when the results for each group are considered in isolation. Moreover, this fact can be repeatedly verified by all of the measures applied, especially in the logical relationships (R scores) and in the macrostructural information (M scores). From these results, we can conclude that the previous reading of the headline and/or the summary of a newspaper article, like the one selected, does not necessarily bring about an improvement in the comprehension and retention of the contents. Rather, from the point of view of macrostructural theory, the headline and the summary prove to be ineffective in better organising the information processes in the memory.
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