This study dealt with feedback and processing discourse. The task was to reconstruct with or without the aid of feedback one of two 26-sentence scrambled passages. The passages were designated as semantic in content and episodic, based on a significant historical event. The independent variables were content (semantic-episodic) and assistance (feedback-no feedback). The dependent variables were recall, recognition, and concordance (tau) of the reconstructed sentence order with the original and gist. Analysis showed (1) recall and recognition scores were higher for the semantic passage, (2) feedback-assisted recognition but not recall, (3) tau (concordance) was higher for the semantic passage and the feedback condition, and (4) there were no differences for gist. The results were generally in the predicted direction, and the implications for instruction are discussed.
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