Faculty Sponsor

Kieth Carlson

College

Arts and Sciences

Discipline(s)

Psychology

Presentation Type

Poster Presentation

Symposium Date

5-3-2014

Abstract

Understanding written material is paramount to everyone’s functioning in society. To bolster our knowledge of the topic, this study sought to test the effects of guided questions with in-text cues on reading comprehension. Participants were asked to read a section of text. Those with the experimental manipulation had visual cues embedded in the reading. These cues were intended to guide participants toward information that was pertinent to the prompt and to post-reading questions. The control group was not exposed to these cues, but was still asked to respond to the questions. Participants were then given a post-test that analyzed the effect of guided questions and the use of cues throughout the text. Questions in the post-test pertained to information targeted by the cues in the text, making them target questions for those who were exposed to the cues in that section of the text, while this was non-target information to the participants not given symbols in that area of the text. Those in the third group served as a control, without any cues throughout the text. Along with reading questions, participants were given a portion of the Multi-Media Comprehension Battery (MMCB) to determine individual comprehension scores. The findings will improve our understanding of reading comprehension.

Biographical Information about Author(s)

Jaqueline Garcia (senior), Jared Joseph (sophomore), and Alex Carli (senior) are students in Dr. Carlson's cognitive psychology lab. They designed this experiment as a result of their exploration of general comprehension.

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