Posted by Heidi in OR on 22:20 Jun 25
The author is discussing how reading skills have much to do with context and knowledge that we already possess, and it doesn't matter how good your 'decoding' skills are if you don't have some background knowlege to relate to what you are reading. (A lot of what he has said so far reminds me of SWB's comment about information being pegs on which to hang new information.) Anyway, he said that an experiment was conducted using 'a passage so general and vague that, in the absence of a context, it was difficult to construct a mental model from it. But if the passage was given a title that invoked relevant prior knowledge, subject constructed a mental model that enabled them to understand and remember the sentences.'
The passage was:
'The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange the items in different groups. Of course one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step; otherwise you are pretty well set.'
I had a tough time reading that passage and making sense of it (maybe I'm slower than some :)).
The author then said that some subjects were given a title before they read the passage, some were given it after, and some not at all. I'll post it again below with the title. :)