Effects of Discourse Type on Recall by Young, Middle, and Old Adults with High and Average Vocabulary Scores.
Bonnie J. F. Meyer, G. Elizabeth Rice · 1983
Discourse can be organized in different ways: two of these ways are comparison and a collection of descriptions. These two discourse types correspond to schemata that vary in their organizational components; these differences are expected to result in differences in processing texts. For young adults of high verbal ability, the more organized discourse type, comparison, has been shown to yield superior recall of information than the less organized type, collection, for descriptions about a topic (Meyer & Freedle, in press). In the present investigation, we expected differential facilitation of the two discourse types by different groups of subjects varying in age and vocabulary performance. For example, the old adults with average vocabulary scores were expected to have difficulty utilizing the comparison organization, but have ready access to the descriptive, list-like organization which more closely matches a more frequently used learning strategy for this population. Thus, the study explored a view that learning of information from discourse can be facilitated by matching its organization to the learner's prevalent learning strategy. The data supported the findings of Meyer and Freedle (in press) in that the comparison structure yielded superior recall. However, we did not find the expected interaction of discourse type, age, and verbal ability. Sampling problems occurred with the vocabulary test used to screen the subjects; instead of high verbal and average verbal groups of subjects, we ran extremely high and high average groups of subjects. Currently, we are attempting to run average verbal adults,