Revising Social Studies Text from a Text-Processing Perspective: Evidence of Improved Comprehensibility

THE PURPOSE of the present study was to use a cognitive processing perspective to revise fifthgrade social studies texts, to describe those revisions, and to demonstrate their effects empirically. Four segments of text from a U.S. textbook about the period leading to the American Revolution and their revised counterparts were presented to 85 fourthand fifth-grade students. Students were presented with the text materials in individual sessions with an examiner and were asked to recall what they had read and to answer questions on the material. Students who read the revised text recalled more material and answered more questions correctly than students who read the original text. Differences in understanding between the two groups were also captured in qualitative analyses of recall protocols and question responses related to specific ideas in the text. Overall, the effects of the revisions demonstrate that a text-processing approach to creating comprehensible text is a viable one. Furthermore, the description of revision goes beyond how revisions have been described in past research by exposing the reasoning underlying the identification of problems and the changes made.