The effects of examples on learning and memory for expository text passages
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine if examples aided learning and memory for expository text passages. The research literature provides three theoretical frameworks that suggest examples may enhance retention and understanding for expository texts. These theories suggest that examples may provide complementary processing strategies, provide hierarchical support for the main text information, or provide a fully reprocessed repetition of the main ideas. Three experiments were used to examine the predictions and assumptions of these theories, and to evaluate the effectiveness of examples in text. The first two experiments led to the conclusion that examples do not boost learning and memory for expository text passages, when compared to succinct presentations of foundational knowledge. A new coding approach provided recall credit for the main units in text to participants that recalled either the passage main idea. Through the new coding approach, limited evidence was found to support the conclusion that examples may overcome the passage length effect typically encountered by text passages that include details. The third experiment revealed that the accessibility hypothesis is not a strong explanatory theory for examples in text passages. Examples presented after sentences on related content were processed at rates similar to paraphrased repetitions in the same conditions. The synthesis of the three experiments provides evidence that the intuitive expectation that examples boost learning for text materials is tempered by a more complex interaction that needs to account for the length of the passage, the reader's prior knowledge framework, and the salience of the hierarchical relationships between examples and main idea units.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Johnson, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Educational psychology|Cognitive therapy
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