Can an Advance Organizer Technique Compensate for Poor Reading Conditions
AbstractIn Experiment 1, 201 college students read both a literary and a technical text either in an advance organizer condition or a non-organizer control condition. Results failed to support the hypothesis that an organizing schema would help subjects with good reasoning skills compensate for poor memory skills or information overload caused by speeded reading conditions. In Experiment 2, data from a sample of 189 college subjects demonstrated that real-world distractions do cause significant learning decrements but failed to support predictions that an organizer would aid distractible students and would compensate for distracting study conditions. Findings suggest that the organizer technique does not help compensate for processing deficits related to information overload or distracting study conditions.