ABSTRACT
The prescription of study activities aimed at increasing students’ retention of text information follows from well-established, basic cognitive research. This research supports the idea that good retention is related to both the elaboration of individual pieces of information (e.g., Bellezza, Cheesman, & Reddy, 1977; Einstein & Hunt, 1980; Franks et al., 1982; Hunt & Einstein, 1981; Reder, Charney, & Morgan, 1986; Stein et al., 1982) and the overall organization of information (Bellezza et al., 1977; Bellezza, Richards, & Geiselman, 1976; Einstein & Hunt, 1980; Hunt & Einstein, 1981). In the pedagogical arena, activities like outlining and summarizing, which encourage organization of the text, have been suggested as good activities for helping students remember information that they read (Glynn, Britton, & Muth, 1985). Text adjuncts like embedded questions and reading objectives have long been viewed as promising candidates for encouraging more elaboration or deeper or more meaningful processing of the information presented in a text (Andre, 1979; Faw & Waller, 1976).
