Modality Effect on Text Processing as a Function of Ability to Comprehend

Abstract

The present study had two purposes. One was to examine the prediction that the modality effect on processing text is influenced by subjects' comprehension. The other was to confirm the assumption that this effect arises not only in the processing of each word in texts but also in the processing of the relations between words (comprehension). The same text was presented to 28 good and 28 poor comprehenders at a fixed pace, auditorily or visually. After presentation of the text, subjects answered two kinds of tests, Memory Test and Comprehension Test. The performance on both tests showed superiority of auditory over visual presentation. These results were discussed in terms of a visual disadvantage: visually presented texts are translated into an auditory form and this extra process leads to insufficient processing of a text when the text is difficult for a processor.

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