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Cited by 1,341Reading and Literacy DevelopmentVisual and Cognitive Learning ProcessesEducational Strategies and Epistemologies

Are Good Texts Always Better? Interactions of Text Coherence, Background Knowledge, and Levels of Understanding in Learning From Text

McNamara, Danielle S., Kintsch, Eileen, Songer, Nancy Butler, Kintsch, Walter·1996·Cognition and Instruction
DOI 10.1207/s1532690xci1401_1
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Abstract

Two experiments, theoretically motivated by the construction-integration model of text comprehension (W. Kintsch, 1988), investigated the role of text coherence in the comprehension of science texts. In Experiment 1, junior high school students' comprehension of one of three versions of a biology text was examined via free recall, written questions, and a key-word sorting task. This study demonstrates advantages for globally coherent text and for more explanatory text. In Experiment 2, interactions among local and global text coherence, readers' background knowledge, and levels of understanding were examined. Using the same methods as in Experiment 1, we examined students' comprehension of one of four versions of a text, orthogonally varying local and global coherence. We found that readers who know little about the domain of the text benefit from a coherent text, whereas high-knowledge readers benefit from a minimally coherent text. We argue that the poorly written text forces the knowledgeable readers to engage in compensatory processing to infer unstated relations in the text. These findings, however, depended on the level of understanding, text base or situational, being measured by the three comprehension tasks. Whereas the free-recall measure and text-based questions primarily tapped readers' superficial understanding of the text, the inference questions, problem-solving questions, and sorting task relied on a situational understanding of the text. This study provides evidence that the rewards to be gained from active processing are primarily at the level of the situation model rather than at the superficial level of text-base understanding.

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  • In the reverse cohesion effect, readers with high knowledge in a domain do better in learning from a text when the text has cohesion gaps.

    “In this reversal effect, readers with high knowledge in a domain do better in learning from a text when the text has cohesion gaps, which presumably stimulate more active knowledge retrieval and inference making.”

    From The Knowledge‐Learning‐Instruction Framework: Bridging the Science‐Practice Chasm to Enhance Robust Student Learning (2012) · cites this paper as McNamara et al, 1996

  • Problem solving yields poorer learning outcomes not because students' cognitive resources are depleted, but because there is less environmental information to support students in filling KC gaps.

    “An alternative, but possibly complementary, theory proposes that problem solving yields poorer learning outcomes not because students' cognitive resources are depleted, but because there is less environmental information to support students in filling KC gaps (cf., McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch 1996 ;VanLehn, 1999).”

    From The Knowledge‐Learning‐Instruction Framework: Bridging the Science‐Practice Chasm to Enhance Robust Student Learning (2012) · cites this paper as McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch 1996

  • People learn more from information presentations if they first participate in activities that activate their knowledge relevant to the topic or generate the important distinctions relevant to understanding the topic.

    “Similarly, people learn more from information presentations if they first participate in activities that activate their knowledge relevant to the topic of the presentation (Britton & Graesser, 1996;Kintsch et al., 1993;McNamara et al., 1996) or generate the important distinctions relevant to understanding the topic (Schwartz & Bransford, 1998).”

    From The Roles of Mental Animations and External Animations in Understanding Mechanical Systems (2003) · cites this paper as McNamara et al., 1996

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Authors
McNamara, D. S., Kintsch, E., Songer, N. B., & Kintsch, W.
Affiliations
University of Colorado Boulder (US)
ORCID
Venue
Cognition and Instruction
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
1996-03
Volume
14
Issue
1
Pages
1-43
ISSN
  • 0737-0008 (ISSN-L)
  • 1532-690X
DOI
10.1207/s1532690xci1401_1
OpenAlex
W1996650435
Cited by
1,341
References
38
Citations by year
2026: 25 · 2025: 31 · 2024: 38 · 2023: 44 · 2022: 53 · 2021: 68 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 66 · 2018: 49 · 2017: 52 · 2016: 60 · 2015: 73 · 2014: 61 · 2013: 74 · 2012: 74
FWCI
27.63
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Cognition and Instruction (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Strategies and Epistemologies
Keywords
text coherence, prior knowledge, levels of understanding, science text comprehension, construction-integration model, situation model, compensatory processing, free recall, inferential comprehension, junior high school students

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