EFFECTS OF CONTENT-RELATED ATTITUDE ON THE COMPREHENSION AND RETENTION OF EXPOSITORY TEXT

A examination of the possibility that readers' attitudes toward a topic might color their perception & recall of factual information about the topic presented in an expository text. Mature readers possessing a clear antinuclear attitude, as measured by a Likert-scale questionnaire administered several months before the study, were compared with equally skilled pronuclear Ss (N = 15 undergraduates each group) on free recall & multiple-choice comprehension tasks following reading of a clearly pro-nuclear-power scientific text. Two weeks later, the multiple-choice probes were administered again to evaluate delayed recall. No significant differences were found between the groups on either free recall or multiple-choice performance, or on a ratio measurement of aggregate error magnitude to number of errors. Possible alternative explanations are considered, including attentional parity, achievement motivation, text hierarchy influences, & ego-involvement. 2 Tables, 44 References. Modified HA