Altering comprehension: The effect of biasing titles on text comprehension

Abstract

Titles can alter the comprehension of a text by affecting the selection of information from a text and the organization of this information in memory. Text comprehension is assumed to involve an organizational process that results in the formation of a text base, an ordered list of semantic units-propositions. The text base can be used as a retrieval scheme to reconstruct the text. Procedures for assigning propositions as more relevant to some themes as compared to other themes are developed and applied to texts. Texts with biasing titles were used in an experiment to demonstrate that immediate free recall is biased toward the theme emphasized in the title. The comprehension process which is guided by the text's thematical information is described.The process of comprehending a text involves the reduction of the information presented in the text. Three interactive factors participate in this process: the reader's goals, the application of previous organized experience, and contextual information in the discourse. This paper concentrates on the effect of one type of superordinate contextual information: the title given to a text.In order to describe the role of a title in text comprehension, a theory of text analysis (Kintsch, 1974) is employed here. This theory is elaborated, so that it becomes possible to decide for a given text which semantic elements in it are relevant to each of several titles that may be assigned to the text.It is not the aim of this paper to compare the ade41uacy of different theoretical approaches to text analysis. Theories (e.g., Frederiksen, 1975;Kintsch, 1974; Meyer, 1975; Crothers, Note 1) vary in their fineness of the analysis applied to texts and in their emphasis on different aspects of texts. Although it is possible to embed parts of the following exposition in other theories, several concepts that are unique to Kintsch's (1974) approach offer a more suitable setting for the subject raised in this work.The literature on contextual information is usually discussed under specific subjects such as advance organizers (Frase, 1975) and adjunct questions (Anderson & Biddle, 1975). Titles are usually considered one kind of advance organizer. Meyer (1975) associates titles with a type of signaling information in the discourse that "prematurely reveals information

Disfluencies in Comprehending Argumentative Texts

“…These devices are used by writers to emphasize the structure of texts and to signal importance. Prior research has shown that readers' representation of the structure of narrative and expository texts is aided by signals that clarify the structure (Beck, McKeown, Sinatra, & Loxterman, 1991;Kozmnsky, 1977;Lorch & Lorch, 1995Lorch, Lorch, & Inman, 1993;Meyer & Rice, 1989;Millis & Just, 1994). This is especially true for challenging texts (Spyridakis & Standal, 1987) and for low-knowledge participants (Goldman, Saul, & Cote, 1995;Lorch & Lorch, 1996).…”

Understanding How Headings Influence Text Processing

“…The general strategy followed in this research was to construct texts with competing themes and manipulate the title of the text to emphasize one of the two themes, then observe the eff ects on ee recall. The fi nding om this research is that readers build a representation of the text that is organized around the biasing title (Bock, 1980;Kozminsky, 1977;Schwarz & Flammer, 1981) with the consequence that memory is better for content that is more closely associated with the theme emphasized by the biasing title than for content associated with the alternative theme. Similarly, Eyrolle, Virbel and Lemarié (2008) showed that users con onted with work documents containing titles that only partially refl ect the text content fail to identi topics that are not represented in the title.…”

“…A second set of investigations used ee recall to understand how headings might infl uence readers' understanding of text (Bock, 1980;Kozminsky, 1977;Schallert, 1976;Schwarz & Flammer, 1981). The general strategy followed in this research was to construct texts with competing themes and manipulate the title of the text to emphasize one of the two themes, then observe the eff ects on ee recall.…”

Topicalization effects in cued recall of technical prose

“…One such signal is a title for the passage. Kozminsky (1977), using passages with two alternate themes, found that recall was biased in favor of propositions relevant to the theme mentioned in the title. Another important surface-level signal is initial mention; items or ideas appearing first in a passage tend to be viewed as thematically important simply by virtue of their position .…”