The development of strategies for studying texts.

BROWN, ANN L., and SMILEY, SANDRA S. The Development of Strategies for Studying Texts. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 1076-1088. In a series of 3 experiments, the strategies of children and college students were examined as they attempted to study texts. College students, under various intentional learning instructions, displayed a clear diagnostic pattern. Following extended study they improved recall of important, but not unimportant, elements of texts. Eleventh and twelfth graders conformed to the adult pattern, but fifth through eighth graders were not as efficient. Older students benefited from increased study time because they possessed the necessary knowledge concerning the importance of text segments to enable them to concentrate on the essential. Younger students, not so prescient, did not concentrate exclusively on the important units, for they did not know what they were. Age was not the sole determinant of performance, for some students at each age spontaneously adopted the strategies of underlining or note-taking. Those who did concentrated on the important elements and subsequently approached the adultlike pattern in recall; those who did not displayed the immature pattern, even if induced to adopt I of the strategies.

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