Paragraph organization of written materials: The influence of conceptual clustering upon the level and organization of recall.

Abstract

Forty-eight sentences, which associated eight attributes with six chessmen, were clustered in paragraphs by chessman, by attribute, or by rote group (randomized). One-half of 42 high school graduates were told the conceptual structure of the passage before reading. Subjects read the passages for three 5-minute periods-in orde'r to learn the information and to evaluate chess play. Free recall was required after each reading. With the organized passages, recall was about 50 per cent higher 'than with the rote group, but the rote group showed as much clustering (78 per cent) , as one of the organized passages. Conceptual preinformation improved performance as trials increased but did snot influence recall clustering. Primacy effects were obtained for the organized passages. Application test scores, although in the same direction as recall scores. did not differ svificantly. Application scores correlated only with recall of the attributes concerning how the chessmen move. References and tasles are included.. (MD) Abstract Forty-eight sentences, which associated 8 attributes with 6 chessmen, were clustered in paragraphs by chessman, by attribute, or randomized (rote group). One-half of 42 high school graduates were told the conceptual structure of the passage before reading.Ss read the passages for three 5 min.periods in order to learn the information and t, evaluate chess play. Free recall was required after each reading.With organized passages, recall was about 50% higher than for the rote group, but the rote group showed as much clustering (78%) as one of the organized passages. Conceptual pre-information improved performance as trials increased, but did not influence recall clustering. Primacy effects were obtained for the organized passages. Application test scores, although in the same direction as recall scores, did not differ significantly. Application scores correlated only with recall of the attributes concerning how the chessmen move.

Initial mention as a signal to thematic content in technical passages

“…One of the earliest demonstrations of this fact was provided by Deese and Kaufman (1957), who showed that as word lists became closer approximations to English prose, the normal serial position curve for word-list recall lost its recency portion, whereas the primacy portion of the curve became more exaggerated. Similar primacy effects for organized prose have appeared in more modern work (e.g., de Villiers, 1974;Frase, 1969;Meyer & McConkie, 1973), usually in the context of the "levels effect." This effect, which has been reported frequently (e.g., Johnson, 1970;Kintsch, Kozminsky, Streby, McKoon, & Keenan, 1975;Thorndyke, 1977), is that information that is at a high level of importance in the propositional structure of the passage content is recalled better than that at low levels.…”

Modification of Current Feedback Strategies: A Text Synthesis Approach.

“…In a typical study (Frase, 1969), subjects using a name concept strategy were superior to those using an attribute strategy, and both were superior to the scrambled order group. Sasson (1971) interrelated two different topics, a variant of the scrambled order method, and found in both instances that a thematic organization produced superior student achievement as compared to temporal (i.e., sentences included a date) and logical arrangements.…”

Altering comprehension: The effect of biasing titles on text comprehension

“…Presenting the title after exposure to the text does not facilitate recall (Bransford & Johnson, 1972;Dooling & Mullet, 1973;Frase, 1969), suggesting that the locus of the effect is in acquisition. But the material that was used in these experiments was difficult and almost incomprehensible without a proper title, leaving open the possibility that titles may also play a role as a retrieval scheme, as suggested by Gagne (1969) and Gagne and Wiegand (1970).…”