One hundred forty-four high school students read four 70-word passages describing fictitious scenes. A partial or complete, verbal or graphic context was presented before or after each passage. The retention measures were total words recalled, idea units correctly recalled, and number of high-thematic intrusions produced. In all cases, subjects receiving graphic contexts recalled more than those receiving verbal contexts. Recall was greated for concrete passages than for abstract passages. Thus, contextual information was shown to have facilitative effects on comprehension and retention of prose material. Also, the degree to which recall was facilitated varied as a function of the type of contextual information provided.
References
1.
AndersonR. C.OrtonyA.On putting apples into bottles: a problem of polysemy. Cognitive Psychology1975, 7, 167–180.
2.
BartlettF. C.Remembering. London: Cambridge University Press, 1932.
3.
BransfordJ. D.FranksJ. S.The abstraction of linguistic ideas. Cognitive Psychology1971, 2, 331–350.
4.
BransfordJ. D.JohnsonM. K.Contextual prerequisites for understanding: some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior1972, 11, 717–726.
5.
BransfordJ. D.JohnsonM. K.Considerations of some problems of comprehension. In WilliamG. Chase (ed), Visual information processing. New York: Academic Press, 1973, 383–438.
6.
DoolingD. J.LachmanR.Effects of comprehension on retention of prose. Journal of Experimental Psychology1971, 88, 216–222.
7.
DoolingD. J.MulletR. L.Locus of thematic effects in retention of prose. Journal of Experimental Psychology1973, 97, 404–406.
8.
HavilandS. E.ClarkH. H.Whats new? Acquiring new information as a process in comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior1974, 13, 512–521.
9.
PaivioA.Imagery and verbal processes. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971.
10.
PompiK. F.LachmanR.Surrogate processes in the short-term retention of connected discourse. Journal of Experimental Psychology1967, 75, 143–150.
11.
ThorndikeE. L.LorgeI.The teacher's word book of 30,000 words. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, Bureau of Publications, 1944.
12.
WinerB. J.Principles of experimental design. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971.
