The interaction of reader strategies and the organization of text

A model is proposed for the interaction between reader and text in arriving at an identification of the overall logical organization to be used by the reader in processing and remembering the text. Different emphasis patterns provided by the writer for a text on railroads are shown to result in different organizational patterns and types of information recalled by adults. Recall protocols written by adults with different reading strategies are examined for different versions of this text. In addition, other subjects reported their expectations for these versions of the railroad text when asked to read and comment on the text in a sentence-by-sentence manner; the reported expectations show similarities with the model and the recall data.