Effect of type of objective, level of test question, and the judged importance of tested materials upon posttest performance.

Abstract

Conducted 2 experiments to test the hypotheses that (a) when Ss read 5 passages each containing information on 3 related psychological concepts and completed a posttest containing recognition and application questions, the differences between Ss provided with behavioral objectives and those provided with nonbehavioral objectives would be nonsignificant for recall questions but significant for application questions; and (b) that providing Ss with behavioral objectives during study should improve posttest performances on items Ss judge unimportant but should not influence performance on items Ss judge important. 80 undergraduates (including 24 controls who completed the posttest only) were Ss in Exp I, and 87 undergraduates (including 27 controls) served in Exp II. Results are the reverse of the predictions of the 1st hypothesis and support the 2nd hypothesis. It is concluded that the perceived importance of an item of information determines whether behavior objectives will be helpful during training.

The Potential for Directing Study in Combined Reading and Writing Activity

“…Students who formulated questions restated relatively more top level information than did other students. These outcomes are consistent with the findings of previous research that links drawing comparisons across texts to increased reader-based recall (Hayes & Tierney, 1982) and that links formulating questions to increased attention to a text's most important information (Andre & Anderson, 1978;Duell, 1974). The present results indicate that question writing is also linked to increased reader-based recall as well as to increased attention to an axial text's more important information.…”

“…Most of the research on written response to reading has investigated writing summaries of texts (Bean & Steenwyk, 1984;Bretzing & Kulhavy, 1979;Bromley, 1985;Doctorow, Wittrock, & Marks, 1978;Hare & Borchardt, 1984;Taylor & Beach, 1984). Several studies have investigated writing questions about text content (Andre & Anderson, 1978;Collins, Gentner, & Rubin, 1980;Duell, 1974Duell, , 1978Knapczyk & Livingston, 1974;Prosser, 1974). There have been studies that directly compared the effects of summary writing and self-questioning about texts (Dansereau, McDonald, Long, Atkinson, Ellis, Collins, Williams, & Evans, 1974;King, Biggs, & Lipsky, 1984).…”

Nobody Knows How to Remember That Prose

“…The results support Duell's (5) findings that higher order aids were not superior to lower order aids and contradict data reported by Hunkins (9), Shavelson et aI., (17) and Watts and Anderson (18) indicating that higher order aids resulted in better overall posttest scores than lower order aids.…”

Relevance and Goal-Focusing in Text Processing

“…Examples of specific relevance instructions include reading to answer pre-reading questions or objectives (Duchastel & Brown, 1974;Duell, 1974;Frase & Kreitzberg, 1975;Gagne & Rothkopf, 1975;Kaplan, 1974;Kaplan & Rothkopf, 1974;McCrudden et al, 2005;Peeck, 1970;Reynolds, Trathen, Sawyer, & Shepard, 1993;Rothkopf & Billington, 1975a,b, 1979Rothkopf & Kaplan, 1972, 1978, use of inserted questions (Lapan & Reynolds, 1994;Lorch, Lorch, Gretter, & Horn, 1987a;Reynolds, 1992;Reynolds & Anderson, 1982;Reynolds, Standiford, & Anderson, 1979;Rickards & Di Vesta, 1974;Rothkopf & Billington, 1974;Shavelson, Berliner, Ravitch, & Loeding, 1974;Swenson & Kulhavy, 1974;van den Broek, Tzeng, Risden, Trabasso, & Basche, 2001), and answering explanatory "why" questions (van den Broek et al, 2001;Ozgungor & Guthrie, 2004;Seifert, 1993Seifert, , 1994Willoughby, Wood, Desmarais, Sims, & Kalra, 1997;Willoughby, Wood, & Khan, 1994). Pre-reading questions or objectives are examined prior to reading whereas inserted questions are interspersed throughout a text.…”