Tzeng, J.-Y. (2010). Designs of concept maps and their impacts on readers' performance in memory and reasoning while reading. Journal of Research in Reading, 33(2), 128-147.
Tzeng, J.-Y.
2010
Tzeng, J.-Y. (2010). Designs of concept maps and their impacts on readers' performance in memory and reasoning while reading. Journal of Research in Reading, 33(2), 128-147.
From the perspective of the Fuzzy Trace Theory, this study investigated the impacts of concept maps with two strategic orientations (comprehensive and thematic representations) on readers’ performance of cognitive operations (such as perception, verbatim memory, gist reasoning and syntheses) while the readers were reading two history articles that argue from different perspectives about a historical incident that had a profound impact on Taiwan. The results show that the design and focus of the concept maps may influence the formation of mental representations, and that this may be facilitative or constraining in regard to the readers’ memory formation and reasoning about the reading materials. Based on these findings, the meaning of constraining effects of concept maps is discussed, and an instructional method involving the progressive elaboration of concept map systems is recommended
The result of the lesser correspondence between the thematic concept map and the text was significantly fewer valid propositions recalled by the participants. In other words, the greater the effort that the participants had to expend to integrate the concept map and the text, the more detrimental it was for them to recall the text-based representation. Moreover, the nonsignificant difference in the total number of propositions made by the comprehensive and the no map groups indicates that the comprehensive map was a saturated representation of the text, and that it was easy to memorise the content of a short text as used in this experiment. The fact that both map groups outperformed the no map group on the gist comprehension questions indicates that having a map helped the participants to identify the relationships and to fill in the missing links between concepts.
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