Abstract

GARCIA-UTRERA, Luis  and  PEREZ-ALMONACID, Ricardo. Effects of textual structure on comprehension and abstraction of historical facts. Act.Colom.Psicol. [online]. 2022, vol.25, n.2, pp.41-64.  Epub Aug 02, 2022. ISSN 0123-9155.  https://doi.org/10.14718/acp.2022.25.2.3.

In two experiments, the effect of textual structure on the comprehension and abstraction of texts from a non-representational psychological approach was investigated. In the first experiment, fifteen college students read three different historical texts with one of three structures: -sequential, hierarchical, and circumstantial- and t was measured whether they interpreted, under-intetpreted or over-interpreted the texts in three tests specific to each structure, and whether they abstracted a fact common to the three texts. In the second, the first experiment was systematically replicated but with another fifteen students, who were assigned according to their conceptual knowledge of the historical-political domain. The results suggest greater under-intetpretation with the sequential structure, and greater over-interpretation with the hierarchical and circumstantial. Conceptual knowledge explained the findings better than the textual structure but did not account for all variability. The results are discussed in terms of linguistic mediation as a subordinating competence of both conceptual knowledge and textual structure. It also highlights the advantages of the evolving record of each reader's comprehension, anticipates some sources of additional control for future studies, and concludes by proposing some educational implications of the findings.

Keywords : textual structure; comprehension; abstraction; conceptual knowledge; linguistic mediation.

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