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Article
Why Do Delayed Summaries Improve Metacomprehension Accuracy?
Acta Psychologica
  • Mary C. M. Anderson, College of DuPage
  • Keith W. Thiede, Boise State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-1-2008
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.

Citation Information
Mary C. M. Anderson and Keith W. Thiede. "Why Do Delayed Summaries Improve Metacomprehension Accuracy?" Acta Psychologica (2008)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/keith_thiede/7/