van den Broek, P., Lorch, R.F., Linderholm, T. et al (2001). “The effects of readers’ goals on inference generation and memory for texts.” Memory & Cognition 29(8): 1081-1087. DOI: 10.3758/BF03206376
Goal! It’s the satisfying end to a hockey game in overtime or any sport for that matter, but how is it connected with the reading we do, our ability to process information, and our ability to learn information? That is the objective of the study listed above. In the construct, researchers engaged 71 college students to read one of four texts from Scientific American magazine, either with the stated goal of study or of entertainment. The goal was further reinforced with the presence of either stacked textbooks (study) or an array of magazines (entertainment) on the desk. As participants read the text aloud one sentence at a time from index cards, their comments were recorded. They were encouraged to comment after each card. All utterances were coded as: 1) explanatory inferences, 2) predictive inferences, 3) associations, 4) monitoring, 5) paraphrasing, 6) repetition, 7) evaluation, or 8) affective. Afterward, participants were given an open recall assessment of the material. Results indicated that readers recalled more successfully when their goal was to study the material than to read it for entertainment. For those in the entertainment condition, most responses were monitoring progress (24%), followed by evaluation of the material (13%), then paraphrasing (9%) with the lowest frequency of responses in repetition and affective areas at less than 1%. For those in the study condition, most responses were in paraphrasing (19%), explanatory inferences (15%), and predictive inferences (12%), with the lowest frequency in the affective area at less than 1%. The study provides excellent support for the idea that strategies differ when readers have a goal of study (paraphrasing, explaining, predicting, and repeating) vs. entertainment (monitoring, evaluating, and paraphrasing).
All aspects of this research study were particularly well-prepared, from the clear research questions at the outset to the detailed literature review that delved into the topic of standards of coherence for a theoretical framework and onward to the presentation of hypotheses, the recitation of results, the discussion, and the return to the theoretical basis for the investigation. [Can you tell that I just finished writing a critical research review of a study that did not do any of those important things?] This was a very well-done study. The only recommendation that I would have is that the analysis presented only addressed the comparison of where one condition demonstrated a stronger response in the category than the other. I recommend (and provided above) an analysis of the types of and order of frequency of responses by condition, which provides information about the likely strategies for each goal orientation. There were also two areas of control which were not mentioned in the course of the study, but may have been done by the researchers. First, the participants were 50 women and 21 men. With a significant imbalance of this magnitude, it would be wise to analyze the results of each gender separately to determine if there was a gender-specific difference in the response rates which was statistically-significant. The second concern addresses the four texts which were used in the study. An analysis separating the results by text would be beneficial to determine whether participants were significantly more likely to score well on particular readings.
As a Language and Literature teacher, this study was helpful in clarifying what we would assume instinctively — that students reading for academic purposes will strategize differently than those reading for entertainment. The specifications of strategies and the comparative degree with which they are engaged is helpful to understanding the dynamics of readers. As this study was completed with college students, a modified replication with younger learners would be particularly intriguing, even a set of companion studies focused on elementary, middle, and high school levels to ascertain whether strategies fluctuate or how they might develop over time.
Reading for study purposes engages the strategies of explaining, paraphrasing, and predicting, yielding better recall than what we read for the purpose of entertainment.
EmpowerED 