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QuikScan and reading strategies

Lohuis, A.H. (2013) QuikScan and reading strategies.

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Abstract:Background. QuikScan (QS) is a new and innovative text design. It facilitates reading and information navigation in documents. QuikScan uses within-document summaries to summarize the gist of each segment of the body text. The summaries are formatted as numbered list items and correspond to the segments in the body text. Aim. Empirical studies have shown that QuikScan improves reading for understanding and recall by helping readers construct a coherent text model. It is still unclear how QuikScan affects the reading strategies of the participants. The aim of the study is to investigate how readers process the QuikScan summaries and text. Method. The participants were 37 students from the University of Twente in Enschede. They were in their Bachelor of Psychology or Communication Studies programs. Eye movements were recorded while they read a QuikScanned text of seven pages. Recall was assessed with an open answer test. Results. Participants used three main kinds of strategies to study the QuikScan summaries (QSs) and body texts. The two most dominant strategies were called the “Linear strategy” and the “Number to number strategy”. These strategies show several variants. One other distinct strategy was found, “Reading Summary Statement First”. Overall participants spent relatively more time on the QuikScan summaries than on the body texts as measured by the ratio of the number of words in the summaries and the segments of body text. There were found significant effects of strategy on the reading time of the QuikScan summaries. No significant differences were found on the test questions between the main strategies. There were no significant correlations found between the test scores and the overall reading time. Conclusions. Readers use different strategies to process a QuikScanned text. The strategies that have been found reflect the different usage of summaries. They also seemed to have an relationship with the functions of QuikScan. There was one noteworthy finding of the effectiveness of these reading strategies. Further research is needed to understand the different functionalities and the reasons why only a significant effect on the test score between the variants of the Linear strategy was found.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology MSc (66604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/64215
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