RELEVANT AND IRRELEVANT SEDUCTIVE DETAILS IN EXPOSITORY TEXT: EFFECTS ON RECALL AND COMPREHENSION IN READERS WITH LOW PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Authors

  • Gastón Saux Universidad Católica Argentina
  • Natalia Irrazabal CONICET
  • Debora I. Burin Universidad de Buenos Aires

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22235/cp.v8i1.1043

Keywords:

expository text comprehension, seductive detail, causal relevance

Abstract

The effect of including seductive details on the recall and comprehension of an expository structured, scientific text was examined. 94 students with low prior knowledge on the subject read a text in one of following three conditions: without seductive details, with an irrelevant seductive detail (no causal relation with the rest of the message), or with a relevant seductive detail (with an explicit causal relation with the rest of the message). Causal relevance and the level of interest associated to the detail were analyzed prior to experimental activity. Results indicated that the Irrelevant Seductive Detail condition showed the poorest recall and the highest error rate in a sentence verification task. Relevant Seductive Detail condition, on the other hand, showed the best recall for text contents. These results are interpreted considering their potential applications in educational fields.

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Published

2014-05-30

How to Cite

Saux, G., Irrazabal, N., & Burin, D. I. (2014). RELEVANT AND IRRELEVANT SEDUCTIVE DETAILS IN EXPOSITORY TEXT: EFFECTS ON RECALL AND COMPREHENSION IN READERS WITH LOW PRIOR KNOWLEDGE. Ciencias Psicológicas, 8(1), 89–100. https://doi.org/10.22235/cp.v8i1.1043

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Section

ORIGINAL ARTICLES

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