The Influence Of Cognitive Styles And Reading Ability On The Effects Of Text Signals

We usually obtain knowledge and information by reading. Authors of text convey some important ideas and relationships in text through the use of signals. Signals are stylistic writing devices that highlight aspects of semantic content or structural organization in text without communicating additional semantic content. Authors of text convey some important ideas and relationships in text through the use of signals. Such devices may include headings, preview statements, summary statements, pointer words and typographical words. It has been shown to improve recall of relevant content material and to improve performance on problem solving transfer tests, when applied to explanatory text. Signaling the organization of text or signaling main ideas yields superior recall of main ideas. Other researches point to the magnitude of signaling effects being dependent on the complexity and structure of text or reading abilities, interests or cognitive styles.The effects of cognitive style and reading ability on the retention of text content were probed into in the experiment. Using an expository text in three forms with organizational signals, typographical signals and without signals as reading materials, The 120 participants were the students in grade 2 of a junior middle school students with two cognitive styles (field-dependent and field-independent) and two reading ability (higher and lower) in the experiment. Through analyzing four kinds of text information (topic access, overall information, subsequent access to the topic, detailed signaling information) during the free recall.We have made the following conclusions:First, there was a significant interaction between signals and cognitive styles, while there was no significant difference between the field-independence and the field- dependence in the condition of organizational signals, but the performance of the field- independence was significantly better than that of the field-dependence in the condition of no organizational signals.Secondly, the higher reading ability participants' topic access and overall information scored significantly higher than the lower reader, while in thesubsequent access to the text's topic significantly lower the latter. It statements that the different reading ability not only affects overall information of text, but also attributes the reader recall content during the free recall.Thirdly, there was significant facilitating effect of organizational signals on the retention of text topic information, and the readers strategically used text organizational signals to process the discourse and that trading-off effect existed were supported, not spreading over effect. Meanwhile the results showed that there was significant facilitating effect of typographical signals on the retention of detailed text information, but there was no significant spreading over effect. The results implied that the readers constructed the representation of text topics with the aid of text organizational signals and searched it top-down in free recall. And that they constructed the representation of detailed information by text typographical signals.Fourthly, typographical signals can facilitate the participants of lower reading ability and field-independent style to process the detailed information, while organizational signals can depress the participants of lower reading ability and field-dependence to process the detailed information.