Level of Importance of Postquestions and Children’s Learning from Text

Abstract

This research was designed to investigate the effects of postquestions directed at information of differing levels of importance on children’s understanding and recall of expository text. One hundred seventy-two average and above average fifth grade students read one of three short, expository passages and wrote the answers to a set of postquestions directed at either the most important, the next most important, the least important, or text-irrelevant information. One week later subjects wrote a free-recall and answers to a set of test questions. The results of the analysis of the recall data indicated that subjects’ recall of the questioned information was superior to their recall of the unquestioned information and to the recall of subjects who were questioned about different information regardless of the level of importance of the postquestions. The results of the analysis of the children’s answers to the test questions corroborated the findings from the recall data. These results support the conclusion that postquestions directed at information from all levels of importance within expository text result in a backward review effect in children that is specific to questioned information.