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Why do delayed summaries improve metacomprehension accuracy?
Mary C M Anderson1, Keith W Thiede
1College of DuPage, 425 Fawell Boulevard, Glen Ellyn, Illinois 60137, United States.
Abstract:
We showed that metacomprehension accuracy improved when participants (N=87 college students) wrote summaries of texts prior to judging their comprehension; however, accuracy only improved when summaries were written after a delay, not when written immediately after reading. We evaluated two hypotheses proposed to account for this delayed-summarization effect (the accessibility hypothesis and the situation model hypothesis). The data suggest that participants based metacomprehension judgments more on the gist of texts when they generated summaries after a delay; whereas, they based judgments more on details when they generated summaries immediately after reading. Focusing on information relevant to the situation model of a text (the gist of a text) produced higher levels of metacomprehension accuracy, which is consistent with situation model hypothesis.
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