Effects of seductive details evidenced by gaze duration

Abstract

According to a meta-analysis of empirical studies, seductive details such as emotionally interesting text segments and attention-grabbing pictures have significant negative effects on the reader's recall, reading comprehension, and learning of important textual information. This study investigates the negative effects of seductive details on recall of main ideas and reading comprehension by using an eye-tracking technique. In the experiment, a total of 56 undergraduate students read a block of expository text with seductive details, and the spatial and temporal distribution of attention was measured by gaze duration and recorded by an eye tracker. Then recall and reading comprehension tests were employed. Two multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between attention allocation and reading performance. The results indicate that increased attention to seductive sentences, not to seductive pictures, was a major determinant of poor performance in terms of both recall and reading comprehension, suggesting that increased attentional allocation to seductive sentences may hinder information retrieval and produce a less coherent mental representation of given text.

Who Benefits from Diagrams and Illustrations in Math Problems? Ability and Attitudes Matter

“…Seductive details in text, illustrations, or both reduced participants' recall of target information and reduced their application of the material to new problems. A few other studies have yielded mixed or null effects of seductive details (e.g., Chang & Choi, 2014;Schraw, 1998;Schraw & Lehman, 2001); however, the majority of findings in the literature indicate that seductive details are negative. Indeed, a recent meta-analysis (Rey, 2012) of 39 experimental effects revealed a significant negative effect of seductive details, both for memory retention and for transfer.…”

Processing and learning of enhanced English collocations: An eye movement study

“…Prior to analysing eye fixation data, data obtained from four participants were eliminated due to excessive reading time. The criterion used was three standard deviations from the total reading time for all participants (Chang & Choi, 2014). In total, eye fixation data from 38 participants were included in the main data analyses.…”

Neural correlates of second language reading comprehension in the presence of congruous and incongruous illustrations

“…Further neuroimaging study is necessary to investigate the possible difference in neural correlates between L1 and L2 learners when processing text-congruous and incongruous illustrations. Finally, participants of this study were proficient L2 readers whose reading comprehension skills approximated those of juniors in the U.S., as measured by Nelson-Denny Reading Test (Chang & Choi, 2014), and therefore, different results could be observed for L2 readers who have a relatively low reading comprehension skills.…”

“…The Nelson-Denny Reading Test (NDRT) was used to determine the participants' English reading proficiency. NDRT has been utilized by many researchers for screening purposes and also for reporting an objective measurement of participants' reading comprehension abilities (e.q., Chang & Choi, 2014;O'Reilly & McNamara, 2007;Turley-Ames, 2003). According to the test results, the mean raw scores of the participants was 60.2 (SD ¼ 8.70), indicating that the participants' reading comprehension skills were similar to those of juniors attending four-year colleges or universities in the U.S.…”