Headings as memory facilitators: The importance of prior knowledge.

Abstract

Ninety-four college student subjects read a 4,840-word passage on organization in memory with headings either present or absent. Those subjects who were enrolled in a college course on human memory were defined as the high-preexisting-knowledge subjects, and those subjects who had never been enrolled in such a course were defined as the low-preexisting-knowledge subjects. An analysis of the scores on the multiple-choice retention test revealed that the only significant facilitative effect of the headings was in the answering of main-idea retention test questions by subjects with high-preexisting knowledge about the topic.

Differences between experts and novices when reading with navigational table of contents

“…Several researchers examined the effectiveness of headings for low/high domain knowledge participants, but no consensus was reached. Wilhite (1989) found that compared with no-headings, headings improved the performance of participants with high domain knowledge more than those with low domain knowledge. In contrast, Goldman and Duran (1988) provided evidence that headings were more effective for low domain knowledge participants.…”

An Empirical Method of Assessing Topic Familiarity in Reading Comprehension Research

“…In essence, the subjects' memory for content-specific information may be primed by the pre-test, thus confounding the patterns observed on the experimental inventories. Wilhite (1989), summarizing some of his previous work (Wilhite, 1988), observed the possible confounding influences of a familiarity pre-test in his studies of the effects of headings in text and noted that "for the subjects with high levels of pre-existing knowledge, the pretest questions contributed to the facilitative effect of the headings" (p. 115).…”

“…Another obvious way to control the effects of familiarity is to directly manipulate subjects' familiarity through pre-training on the concepts and content of the experimental materials (Linde & Bergstrom, 1988;Barnes et al, 1989;Stahl et al, 1989;Wilhite, 1989).…”

“…Investigators who rely on pre-training have no information on the presence of serendipitous and compatible topic familiarity that may contribute to subjects' performance on outcome measures. For example, Wilhite (1989) assumed that subjects who had not taken a course on the organization of human memory would have much less familiarity with the topic than those subjects enrolled in a class dedicated to the topic. However, the other subjects may have taken courses (e.g.…”

Ακουστική Αντίληψη Στοιχείων Της Τυπογραφίας Σχολικών Βιβλίων Από Τυφλούς Και Βλέποντες Μαθητές

“…Οι τίτλοι κατονομάζουν άμεσα τα θέματα των κειμένων και μεταβιβάζουν σιωπηρά την οργάνωση εκείνων των θεμάτων από τη θέση που κατέχουν στο κείμενο. Κατά συνέπεια, η παρουσία των τίτλων μπορεί να βοηθήσει τη μνήμη για το περιεχόμενο και τη δομή ενός κειμένου (Hartley et al, 1980;Hartley & Trueman, 1985;Spyridakis & Standal, 1987;Wilhite, 1989).…”