ABSTRACT
Research on text design has flourished in the last decade, mainly focusing on the function of adjunct questions, summaries, pictures, and so on, while, until recently, little attention had been paid to typographical organisation as a relevant variable in instructional text processing. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects on learning from text of a typographical device which is extensively used in elementary school textbooks: the box, i.e., a frame in which some information is highlighted. 140 fourth-graders read an expository text on insects, in which the positioning of the box and the type of framed information varied. After reading, they were submitted to a multiple-choice test and a written recall task. Different MANOVA models were adopted and the results showed that the presence and positioning of the box had no influence either on literal or comprehension item responses. On the basis of log-linear analyses it emerged that the effectiveness of the box seems to depend both on the type of information framed in it and on the learner’s comprehension ability level.
