MENTAL-IMAGERY, TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS, AND CHILDRENS STORY COMPREHENSION AND RECALL

THIS STUDY investigated the effects of instructions to induce mental imagery and attend to text illustrations on fourth graders' reading comprehension and recall of narrative text. The 120 subjects were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: instructions to induce mental imagery (nonillustrated text version), instructions to attend to text illustrations (illustrated text version), instructions to induce mental imagery and attend to text illustrations (illustrated text version), and general memory instructions (nonillustrated version). After receiving instructions according to treatment condition, subjects silently read a narrative story, rendered a free recall, and responded to 16 cued recall questions (8 text explicit and 8 text implicit). The major findings of this study were that images and illustrations independently enhanced reading performance, and that, in combination, these two strategies resulted in impressive increases in children's comprehension and recall of stories. The authors interpret these findings as support for the imagery-illustration interaction theory.