| Abstract |
Textbook passages are often lengthy and time-consuming to read due to elaborations. Elaborations are details that describe and illustrate the main idea. Past research does not clearly support that elaborations enhance memory for main ideas. The current study investigated the hypothesis that difficulty identifying what the main ideas are accounts for less time spent reading the main ideas and lower memory for the main ideas in texts that contain elaborations. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to study either an unelaborated, elaborated, or elaborated signaled version of a text (in which main ideas were bolded). They then took a cued-recall test over what they had learned two days later. Groups did not differ in cued recall performance, whereas the elaborated signaled group spent more time reading the entire text but less time reading the main ideas. One possible explanation is that participants did not understand that bolded means important. Experiment 2 involved a stronger manipulation to ensure that participants knew that bolded sentences contained main ideas. The results from this study showed that once again, all three groups performed the same on the cued-recall test, and the elaborated signaled group still spent the most time reading the entire passage but less time on the main ideas. Difficulty identifying the main ideas in a text does not account for less time spent reading the main ideas.
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| Modified Abstract |
Textbook passages are often lengthy and time-consuming to read due to elaborations (details describing and illustrating main ideas). Past research does not clearly support that elaborations enhance memory for main ideas. We investigated the hypothesis that difficulty identifying main ideas accounts for less time spent reading main ideas in texts with elaborations. In two experiments, participants studied either an unelaborated, elaborated, or elaborated signaled version of a text (with main ideas in bold). All participants then took a cued-recall test two days later. Groups did not differ in cued recall. The elaborated signaled group spent more time reading the text but less time reading the main ideas. Difficulty identifying main ideas in a text does not account for less time spent reading the main ideas.
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