Effects of text manipulations on quality of written summaries

Abstract Three text manipulations that might influence the quality of written summaries of text were investigated. Cuing, organization, and reduction constraints were systematically manipulated in a descriptive passage presented to 120 undergraduate students. Number of important ideas in the summary, number of words, integration level of important ideas, and deviation in text-summary order of presentation of important ideas were measured. MANOVA and follow-up univariate tests showed particularly strong effects for cuing. Performance across treatment combinations on all four outcome measures was far below ceiling level.

[1]  Jeanne D. Day,et al.  The development of plans for summarizing texts. , 1983 .

[2]  Nancy Lockitch Loman,et al.  SIGNALING TECHNIQUES THAT INCREASE THE UNDERSTANDABILITY OF EXPOSITORY PROSE , 1983 .

[3]  Avon Crismore,et al.  Metadiscourse: What It Is and How It Is Used in School and Non-School Social Science Texts. Technical Report No. 273. , 1983 .

[4]  Ann L. Brown,et al.  Macrorules for summarizing texts: the development of expertise , 1983 .

[5]  H. S. Waters,et al.  Levels of organization in descriptive passages: Production, comprehension, and recall , 1983 .

[6]  T. Van Dijk,et al.  RELEVANCE ASSIGNMENT IN DISCOURSE COMPREHENSION , 1979 .

[7]  L M Reder,et al.  Effects of spacing and embellishment on memory for the main points of a text , 1982, Memory & cognition.

[8]  Ronald E. Johnson.  Recall of prose as a function of the structural importance of the linguistic units. , 1970 .

[9]  David E. Kieras,et al.  A model of reader strategy for abstracting main ideas from simple technical prose , 1982 .

[10]  S. Maxwell,et al.  Analyzing and Interpreting Significant MANOVAs , 1982 .

[11]  Victoria Chou Hare,et al.  Direct Instruction of Summarization Skills. , 1984 .

[12]  Karen K. Wixson,et al.  Becoming a strategic reader , 1983 .

[13]  R. Kail.  Research Strategies for a Cognitive Developmental Psychology of Instruction , 1983 .

[14]  Ruth Garner,et al.  Externalizing Question-Answering Strategies of Good and Poor Comprehenders. , 1983 .

[15]  Ann Humes,et al.  Research on the Composing Process , 1983 .

[16]  Ann L. Brown,et al.  Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-monitoring activities , 1983 .

[17]  Ann L. Brown,et al.  Learning to Learn: On Training Students to Learn from Texts , 1981 .

[18]  Lynne M. Reder,et al.  Elaborations: When do they Help and When do they Hurt? , 1982 .

[19]  P. David Pearson,et al.  The instruction of reading comprehension , 1983 .

[20]  R. Garner.  Efficient Text Summarization Costs and Benefits , 1982 .

[21]  Walter Kintsch,et al.  Toward a model of text comprehension and production. , 1978 .

[22]  Ulla Connor,et al.  Cross-cultural Differences and Perceived Quality in Written Paraphrases of English Expository Prose , 1983 .

[23]  John R. Anderson,et al.  A Comparison of Texts and their Summaries: Memorial Consequences. , 1980 .

[24]  J. Dauben.  Georg Cantor and the Origins of Transfinite Set Theory , 1983 .

[25]  B. Meyer,et al.  The interaction of reader strategies and the organization of text , 1982 .

[26]  Jeanne D. Day,et al.  Teaching Summarization Skills: A Comparison of Training Methods , 1980 .

[27]  Ruth Garner,et al.  Readers' acquisition of the components of the text-lookback strategy , 1984 .