The Effect of Variations in Text Summarization Opportunities on Test Performance

The performance of college students who wrote no, 1, or 2 summaries while studying a text for a recall (fill-in-the-blanks) and recognition (multiple-choice) test was compared. Students in the 3 groups were matched on total amount of time spent studying. Performance on recall and recognition measures for students who wrote only 1 summary of an entire text was superior to that of students who wrote no or 2 summaries (1 for each half of the text). These results (a) support the hypothesis that less frequent summarizing, which requires greater effort, produces better performance; (b) rule out total study time as an explanation for the previously found advantage of summarization; and (c) show that the effect can be obtained for recognition as well as recall measures.