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Abstract

The 1st experiment was conducted to see whether the Cued Association paradigm was applicable to the study of learning from text. Ss' knowledge structures were assessed before reading to obtain a description of their background knowledge structures. After reading, the same assessment was repeated to obtain a description of their episodic text memory. The question of interest was whether the changes in the response patterns could be attributed to the use of text information. 42 Ss participated. Results indicate that reading instructions did not influence the results of the Cued Association task, and the data are thus collapsed across conditions. For each S and each test time, association matrices were derived as described.
A 2nd experiment was conducted to dissociate the effects of repeated exposure to the word list from the effects caused directly by text information and to show that the observed text effects were not merely a reflection of the textbase that is still available immediately after reading. 23 Ss participated. Text information influenced the responses in the experimental group over and above changes due to repeated exposure to the task.