Effects of information search tasks on the comprehension of instructional text

Two experiments investigated the effects of information search tasks on university students' comprehension of a scientific text. In both experiments, undergraduate students read a 2,000-word introductory text on atomic models; then they searched through the text to answer a series of high-level or low-level questions. Finally, they wrote a 1-page summary of the text. In Experiment 1, high-level questions promoted a review-and-integrate search pattern, whereas low-level questions triggered a locate-and-memorize pattern. Moreover, the students tended to include information relevant to the search questions in their summaries. In Experiment 2, a structured over-view (table of contents) increased the initial (presearch) study time and facilitated information localization but did not influence the summary. Again, students included question-relevant materials in their summaries. We conclude that text processing can be successfully guided toward deeper levels of comprehension by means of appropriate task settings and presentation formats.