Use of Passage Cues in Answering of Questions: Investigation of the Effects of an Explicit External Criterion on Adults' Studying Behavior

Abstract

Thirty proficient adult readers were directed to read a passage of about 4200 words under one of two treatments. Half read; responded to a reader-based question; and were given an explicit, external criterion for completing a text-based question. The other 15 subjects read; responded to the same reader-based question; but were given no criterion for completion of the text-based question. All subjects completed a response satisfaction scale and chose either to stop the task at that point or to reanswer the questions with text pages available as external cues. The adults given the criterion treatment—despite superior question-answering performance to their non-criterion peers—expressed dissatisfaction with responses, and chose in large numbers (14 of 15) to reanswer the questions; no non-criterion treatment subjects chose to exercise the same option. Criterion subjects who did choose to reread and reanswer generally selected highly informative pages to assist in work on the text-based questions and improved their answers substantially. Implications from the findings are drawn for classroom practice in the area of “studying.”