I Remember That Question: Using Eye Tracking to See How Prequestions Shape Reading

Answering questions before learning (prequestions) improves memory for the information theyaddress, but how it does so is unclear. A common proposal is that prequestions direct attention tothat information. We tested this account by recording eye movements while participants read atext about polio and tuberculosis after answering prequestions about one topic or none, so thatevery target sentence was read both with and without prequestions. Prequestions improvedmemory only for the prequestioned information, and eye movements showed the samespecificity. Ex-Gaussian models, which separate typical reading time from occasional unusuallylong readings, showed that prequestions did not change typical reading of the answer sentences.Instead, these sentences received more unusually long readings, were looked back to more often,and were re-read for longer; other sentences were unaffected. Prequestions thus guide attentionselectively rather than heightening it, consistent with additional processing when readersrecognize an answer.