Learning with Media by Robert B. Kozma Lyrics
The Reading Processes and the Stability of the Printed Page
The primary symbol system used in books consists of orthographic symbols that,in Western culture, are words composed of phonemic graphemes, horizontally arrayed from left to right. That this arrangement is stable distinguishes text in books from other technologies that use the same symbol system—for example, the marquee on Times Square.This
stability also has important implications for how learners process information from books. Specifically, the stability of text aids in constructing a meaning of the text. Learning with text involves the construction of two interconnected mental representations: a textbase and a situation model (Kintsch, 1988, 1989). The textbase is a mental representation derived directly from the text, at the level of both micro- and macrostructure; it is a propositional representation of the meaning of the text. While progressing through the text, the reader assembles propositions and integrates them with those previously constructed. As memory limits are reached, the most recent and frequently encountered propositions are retained in short-term memory and held together by repetition or the embedding of arguments (Kintsch & van Dijk,
1978). The reader generalizes from these local propositions to form macropropositions, or summary-like statements that represent the gist of the text. Integrating the information from the text in this way increases the likelihood that it will survive in short-term memory and be fixed in long-term memory.
The situation model is a mental representation of the situation described by the text (Kintsch, 1988, 1989). Whereas the textbase is propositional, the situation model can be constructed from propositions or spatial information. The situation model is connected to and constructed from information in the text base and from knowledge structures evoked from long-term memory by information appearing early in the text or information activated by the reader's purpose. These structures—called, variously, schemata (Anderson, Spiro, & Anderson, 1978), frames (Minsky, 1975), and scripts (Schank & Abelson, 1977)—can be characterized as a framework with a set of labeled slots in which values are inserted for particular situations. These structures serve two related purposes: They provide a scaffold upon which the situation model is constructed from the textbase, and they provide default values so that the reader can make inferences about the local situation that were not explicitly mentioned in the text. Learning from text involves the integration of these representations into the comprehender's knowledge system by updating the schemata currently in long-term memory or by constructing a new schema for an unfamiliar situation.
But, what does any of this have to do with media? How does this symbol system influence mental representations and cognitive processes in distinctive ways? And why would learning processes and outcomes be any different for books—which store
orthographic symbols in a fixed, stable way—then they would be for another medium, say audiotape or lecture, which may convey the same linguistic information but in a different symbol system and in a transient way (i.e., speech)? In many situations for fluent readers, reading progresses along the text in a forward direction at a regular rate, and the information could just as well be presented in another, more transient medium. But, on occasion, reading processes interact with prior knowledge and skill in a way that relies heavily on the stability of text to aid comprehension and learning.
In the obvious case, the effort required of poor readers to decode the text draws on cognitive resources that would otherwise be used for comprehension, thus increasing the risk of comprehension, or learning, failure (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). But even fluent readers may have difficulty with longer or novel words, such as technical terms
in an unfamiliar domain. In both of these cases, readers will use the stability of text to recover from comprehension failure. When encountering difficulty, readers will slow their rate, making more or longer eye fixations (Just & Carpenter, 1987), or they may
regress their eyes, going back to review a word as an aid to retrieving a meaning for it from memory (Bayle, 1942). Alternatively, readers may retrieve several meanings for a word and may make longer or additional fixations or may regress over a phrase, a clause, or even a sentence to determine which is appropriate for a given context (Just & Carpenter, 1987; Bayle, 1942). Such difficulties might arise from unusual syntactic structures (e.g., The thief stood before the blackrobed judge entered the courtroom.) or difficulties in interpreting combinations of words to construct local propositions. Readers will slow their rate for a passage on a difficult or novel topic (Buswell, 1937) when they encounter information within a passage that is particularly important to the meaning of the text (Shebilske & Fisher, 1983) or when they must integrate less well organized sentences into macropropositions (Shebilske & Reid, 1979).
All of these are examples of how readers use the stability of the symbol system in books to slow their rate of progression or even to regress over text in a way that would seem difficult or impossible to do with audiotape's ever-advancing presentation of information. However, this distinction is likely to be crucial only in certain situations. For example, readers in the Shebilske and Reid study (1979) reduced their rate from 302 words per minute to 286. This difference is statistically significant, but it may not have practical significance with regard to media use because the typical audiotape presentation rate of 110-120 words per minute would seem to be slow enough to
accommodate these comprehension difficulties. Even the apparent inability to regress over speech might be accommodated by the 2-second duration of information in acoustic memory (Baddeley, 1981) that would allow a listener to recover the three or four most recently spoken words and achieve the same effect as regression over text.
The clearest advantage to the use of the stability of text to aid comprehension is when the reader must regress over segments of information larger than a phrase.
Perhaps more important than the use of the stability of text to recover from local comprehension failure in novel or difficult situations is this use in conjunction with highly developed reading skills (such as those described by Brown, 1980) and elaborate memory structures to strategically process large amounts of text within very familiar domains. This is most dramatically illustrated in a study by Bazerman (1985), who interviewed seven professional physicists and observed them reading professional material in their field. These readers read very selectively, making decisions based on highly developed schemata that extended beyond extensive knowledge of accepted facts and theories in the field to include knowledge about the current state of the discipline and projections of its future development as well as personal knowledge and judgments about the work of colleagues. Readers used this specialized, or domain, knowledge to serve their reading purposes. Most often their interests were to find information that might contribute to their immediate research goals or to expand their background knowledge of the field, and they made their selections based on these purposes.
Bringing schemata and purposes to bear, these subjects would typically read by scanning rapidly over tables of contents and by using certain words to trigger their attention to question a particular title more actively. If a particular term attracted their attention, they would look at other words in the title with the result that about two thirds of the titles more closely examined were subsequently rejected based on this additional information. If even more information was needed to make further selections, they would turn to the abstract.
Having identified an article of interest, they would read parts of it selectively and nonsequentially, jumping back and forth, perhaps reading conclusions then introductions, perhaps scanning figures, and finally reading those sections more carefully that fit their purpose. If an article did not readily fit with their comprehension schemata, the readers would weigh the cost of working through the difficulty against the potential gain relative to their purposes. If they chose to read through a difficult article or section, they would occasionally pause at length to work through the implications of what had been read or read it through several times. They might also look up background material in reference works and textbooks.
The studies above show the range of ways that readers take advantage of the stable structure of text to aid comprehension. In the Bazerman (1985) study, strategic readers with considerable domain knowledge would sometimes progress through the text at a rapid rate, using a single word to skip a vast amount of information. Other times, they would slow considerably, moving back and forth within a text and across texts, to add to their understanding of the field. In other studies (Bayle, 1942; Shebilske & Reid, 1979), readers encountering difficulties with unfamiliar words, syntactic structures, or ideas used the stability of the printed page to slow their rate and regress over passages. None of these processing strategies are available with the transient, linguistic information presented in audiotape or lecture.
The primary symbol system used in books consists of orthographic symbols that,in Western culture, are words composed of phonemic graphemes, horizontally arrayed from left to right. That this arrangement is stable distinguishes text in books from other technologies that use the same symbol system—for example, the marquee on Times Square.This
stability also has important implications for how learners process information from books. Specifically, the stability of text aids in constructing a meaning of the text. Learning with text involves the construction of two interconnected mental representations: a textbase and a situation model (Kintsch, 1988, 1989). The textbase is a mental representation derived directly from the text, at the level of both micro- and macrostructure; it is a propositional representation of the meaning of the text. While progressing through the text, the reader assembles propositions and integrates them with those previously constructed. As memory limits are reached, the most recent and frequently encountered propositions are retained in short-term memory and held together by repetition or the embedding of arguments (Kintsch & van Dijk,
1978). The reader generalizes from these local propositions to form macropropositions, or summary-like statements that represent the gist of the text. Integrating the information from the text in this way increases the likelihood that it will survive in short-term memory and be fixed in long-term memory.
The situation model is a mental representation of the situation described by the text (Kintsch, 1988, 1989). Whereas the textbase is propositional, the situation model can be constructed from propositions or spatial information. The situation model is connected to and constructed from information in the text base and from knowledge structures evoked from long-term memory by information appearing early in the text or information activated by the reader's purpose. These structures—called, variously, schemata (Anderson, Spiro, & Anderson, 1978), frames (Minsky, 1975), and scripts (Schank & Abelson, 1977)—can be characterized as a framework with a set of labeled slots in which values are inserted for particular situations. These structures serve two related purposes: They provide a scaffold upon which the situation model is constructed from the textbase, and they provide default values so that the reader can make inferences about the local situation that were not explicitly mentioned in the text. Learning from text involves the integration of these representations into the comprehender's knowledge system by updating the schemata currently in long-term memory or by constructing a new schema for an unfamiliar situation.
But, what does any of this have to do with media? How does this symbol system influence mental representations and cognitive processes in distinctive ways? And why would learning processes and outcomes be any different for books—which store
orthographic symbols in a fixed, stable way—then they would be for another medium, say audiotape or lecture, which may convey the same linguistic information but in a different symbol system and in a transient way (i.e., speech)? In many situations for fluent readers, reading progresses along the text in a forward direction at a regular rate, and the information could just as well be presented in another, more transient medium. But, on occasion, reading processes interact with prior knowledge and skill in a way that relies heavily on the stability of text to aid comprehension and learning.
In the obvious case, the effort required of poor readers to decode the text draws on cognitive resources that would otherwise be used for comprehension, thus increasing the risk of comprehension, or learning, failure (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). But even fluent readers may have difficulty with longer or novel words, such as technical terms
in an unfamiliar domain. In both of these cases, readers will use the stability of text to recover from comprehension failure. When encountering difficulty, readers will slow their rate, making more or longer eye fixations (Just & Carpenter, 1987), or they may
regress their eyes, going back to review a word as an aid to retrieving a meaning for it from memory (Bayle, 1942). Alternatively, readers may retrieve several meanings for a word and may make longer or additional fixations or may regress over a phrase, a clause, or even a sentence to determine which is appropriate for a given context (Just & Carpenter, 1987; Bayle, 1942). Such difficulties might arise from unusual syntactic structures (e.g., The thief stood before the blackrobed judge entered the courtroom.) or difficulties in interpreting combinations of words to construct local propositions. Readers will slow their rate for a passage on a difficult or novel topic (Buswell, 1937) when they encounter information within a passage that is particularly important to the meaning of the text (Shebilske & Fisher, 1983) or when they must integrate less well organized sentences into macropropositions (Shebilske & Reid, 1979).
All of these are examples of how readers use the stability of the symbol system in books to slow their rate of progression or even to regress over text in a way that would seem difficult or impossible to do with audiotape's ever-advancing presentation of information. However, this distinction is likely to be crucial only in certain situations. For example, readers in the Shebilske and Reid study (1979) reduced their rate from 302 words per minute to 286. This difference is statistically significant, but it may not have practical significance with regard to media use because the typical audiotape presentation rate of 110-120 words per minute would seem to be slow enough to
accommodate these comprehension difficulties. Even the apparent inability to regress over speech might be accommodated by the 2-second duration of information in acoustic memory (Baddeley, 1981) that would allow a listener to recover the three or four most recently spoken words and achieve the same effect as regression over text.
The clearest advantage to the use of the stability of text to aid comprehension is when the reader must regress over segments of information larger than a phrase.
Perhaps more important than the use of the stability of text to recover from local comprehension failure in novel or difficult situations is this use in conjunction with highly developed reading skills (such as those described by Brown, 1980) and elaborate memory structures to strategically process large amounts of text within very familiar domains. This is most dramatically illustrated in a study by Bazerman (1985), who interviewed seven professional physicists and observed them reading professional material in their field. These readers read very selectively, making decisions based on highly developed schemata that extended beyond extensive knowledge of accepted facts and theories in the field to include knowledge about the current state of the discipline and projections of its future development as well as personal knowledge and judgments about the work of colleagues. Readers used this specialized, or domain, knowledge to serve their reading purposes. Most often their interests were to find information that might contribute to their immediate research goals or to expand their background knowledge of the field, and they made their selections based on these purposes.
Bringing schemata and purposes to bear, these subjects would typically read by scanning rapidly over tables of contents and by using certain words to trigger their attention to question a particular title more actively. If a particular term attracted their attention, they would look at other words in the title with the result that about two thirds of the titles more closely examined were subsequently rejected based on this additional information. If even more information was needed to make further selections, they would turn to the abstract.
Having identified an article of interest, they would read parts of it selectively and nonsequentially, jumping back and forth, perhaps reading conclusions then introductions, perhaps scanning figures, and finally reading those sections more carefully that fit their purpose. If an article did not readily fit with their comprehension schemata, the readers would weigh the cost of working through the difficulty against the potential gain relative to their purposes. If they chose to read through a difficult article or section, they would occasionally pause at length to work through the implications of what had been read or read it through several times. They might also look up background material in reference works and textbooks.
The studies above show the range of ways that readers take advantage of the stable structure of text to aid comprehension. In the Bazerman (1985) study, strategic readers with considerable domain knowledge would sometimes progress through the text at a rapid rate, using a single word to skip a vast amount of information. Other times, they would slow considerably, moving back and forth within a text and across texts, to add to their understanding of the field. In other studies (Bayle, 1942; Shebilske & Reid, 1979), readers encountering difficulties with unfamiliar words, syntactic structures, or ideas used the stability of the printed page to slow their rate and regress over passages. None of these processing strategies are available with the transient, linguistic information presented in audiotape or lecture.