Investigating the Development of Topic-Related Attitudes: The Effect on Children's Reading and Remembering Text

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Journal of Educational Research

Volume

84

Publication Date

1991

First Page

334

Last Page

344

Abstract

This study explored the effect of topic-related attitude on children's learning and remembering from text. The subjects were 58 sixth-grade students randomly assigned to three topic-related attitude treatment groups. A3 × 2 × 2 (Favorable-, Unfavorable-, and Neutral-Attitude Groups × Positive and Negative Passages × Immediate and Delayed Recall) repeated measures ANCOVA design was used for the study. Teachers were trained to present a social studies unit about a fictitious country, Titubia. Results within the limitations of the study supported the notion that experimentally created topic-related attitudes do not appear to interfere with the immediate recall of text-based information or cause younger subjects to selectively encode that information. Our study showed that experimentally created topic-related attitudes influenced the delayed reconstruction of memories for text but did not exert sufficient influence to interfere with the initial reception of information from text.

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