Abstract
Experiment 1 compared paragraph comprehension for texts shown either as normal pages on a computer terminal screen or as rapid serial visual presentations (RSVPs) of small text segments to a common location. Over several days of practice, reading comprehension was equivalent in the normal presentation mode and the RSVP format. When successive RSVP segments contained some information in common, to mimic the experience of successive parafoveal and foveal views of words in normal reading, comprehension was somewhat worse than when successive segments contained no overlapping information. Experiment 2 used a variety of segment size and segment duration combinations to investigate the optimal means of presenting text in the RSVP format. Across a variety of presentation rates and text difficulties, comprehension was maximal for segments averaging about 12 character spaces in length. In Experiment 3, texts were divided into short idea units or into random segments of equal average length. Comprehension was shown to be greater in the structured condition than in the random condition. An optimal means of presenting text in the RSVP format could be superior to normal presentation methods for reading and other text-processing tasks.
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The research reported herein was performed pursuant to Grant G-78-0179 from the National Institute of Education, Department of Education, to the fourth author. However, the opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the National Institute of Education, and no official endorsement by the National Institute of Education should be inferred. This research was also supported by grants from the Biomedical Sciences and General Research Funds of the University of Kansas. Nicldas Ward was supported in part by an NIMH National Research Service Award to the University of Kansas
Experiment 3 was based in part on a master’s thesis submitted to the University of Kansas by the first author.
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Cocklin, T.G., Ward, N.J., Chen, HC. et al. Factors influencing readability of rapidly presented text segments. Memory & Cognition 12, 431–442 (1984). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198304
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198304