EFFECTS OF SUMMARIES, MARGINAL NOTES AND FLOW DIAGRAMS ON RECALL OF PROSE TEXT

 The study investigated the position and type effects of different summaries on the retention of some meaningful prose materials. The purpose was to find out if there were any significant differences when the materials are presented with different types of summaries in different positions for different comparable groups of secondary school children. The retention test consisted of 20 items; which were arranged in such a way that they did not aid students1 sequential recalling of the materials. The following hypothesis was tested:

There will be no significant differences among the mean retention scores of different comparable groups presented with the prose text materials with different forms of summaries in different positions, for example, marginal notes for every paragraph or for two paragraphs, summary for every paragraph placed either before or after each paragraph and summaries in the form of flow diagrams of algorithmic charts for the entire text placed either before or after the entire text. Seven random groups of 40 children each were tested.

It was established that: (a) The groups differed significantly from one another in their mean retention scores at the 0.0001 level of significance. (b) The performances of the groups of subjects receiving ‘summaries were better when the summaries were presented after the paragraph or the entire text. c) Summaries in the form of flow diagrams were the best means of aiding retention. (d) The performances of the control group subjects receiving no summaries at all were the poorest of all, The report ends with some discussion on the psychology of retention and memory from the issues highlighted in this study.

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