Influence of Sentence Order and Amount of Higher Level Text Processing upon Reproductive and Productive Memory
Lawrence T. Frase · American Educational Research Journal · 1970
ability of a reader to form and evaluate relations among text items is an important factor in learning from written materials (Richards, 1959). If we assume that learning from written materials is a consequence of establishing relations among pairs of text items, some interesting experimental outcomes can be investigated. For instance, we may take logical classes as the unit of text analysis. Reading can then be considered to result in the recall of sentences (subject-predicate pairs) which represent the formation of two kinds of relations: a) relations between two logical classes within a sentence, and b) relations between two logical classes from different sentences. It seems consistent with traditional usage to say that the recall of the first class of relations depends upon a reproductive process, and that the recall of the second class of relations depends upon a productive process. For instance, one reader may simply remember the sentences he has read in a text: The wealthy of Central Ugala are outcasts. and The who live in the hills are wealthy. The wealthy people, outcasts, and hill people are logical classes in this example. In a reproductive sense, the first reader has learned the text. But another reader may also think productively about this text, and remember that The who live in the hills are outcasts. After reading a text, memory will be comprised of these two kinds of content; reproductive and productive.