Reduced Text Structure at Two Text Levels: Impacts on the Performance of Technical Readers

Abstract

Cues to text structure have been proposed to operate a number of different levels and it has been suggested that lower-level factors (e.g., word decoding) are more critical to reader performance than are higher-level factors (e.g., paragraph and text structure). The current study involved presenting texts in their base form and with cues to coherence at two levels—at the word and paragraph level—removed. These manipulations were performed on technical texts at two levels of familiarity and were presented to technical readers. Tests of recall, recognition, and problem-solving revealed that while removal of cues to local coherence did produce reliable decrements in reader performance, more dramatic effects occurred when both types of cues were removed. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to questions of information design.