Comprehension and recall of text as a function of content variables

Abstract

Short English texts, controlled for number of words and number of propositions, but differing in the number of word concepts in the text base (many versus few), were read and recalled immediately. Reading times were longer and recall was less for texts with many different word concepts than for texts with fewer word concepts. Superordinate propositions were recalled better than subordinate propositions and forgotten less when recall was delayed. The probability that a word concept was recalled increased as a function of both the number of repetitions of that concept in the text base and the number of repetitions of the corresponding word in the actual text. These results also obtained when subjects listened to the experimental paragraphs.