Repetitive Reading and Recall of Expository Text

SIXTY GRADUATE STUDENTS instructed to read a 669-word expository passage one, two, or three times completed both free and cued recall measures on three test occasions. Effects of repeated reading of to-be-learned material on recall and retention, as well as persistence of errors over time, were examined. Both quantitative and qualitative differences in recall were found as a function of the number of times text was read. Subjects who read the passage twice prior to first recall remembered significantly more text information than subjects reading the passage one or three times. Subjects who read the passage three times exhibited disproportionate recall of details versus main ideas. Persistence of initial encoding errors was remarkably stable for all groups despite the fact that all subjects reread the passage after the first recall. As expected, errors on the first cued recall were more likely to be repeated on a delayed recall, once they had been repeated on an immediate retest.