Effects of seductive details evidenced by gaze duration.
According to a meta-analysis of empirical studies, seductive details such as emotionally interesting text segments and attention-grabbing pictures have significant negative effects on the reader's recall, reading comprehension, and learning of important textual information. This study investigates the negative effects of seductive details on recall of main ideas and reading comprehension by using an eye-tracking technique. In the experiment, a total of 56 undergraduate students read a block of expository text with seductive details, and the spatial and temporal distribution of attention was measured by gaze duration and recorded by an eye tracker. Then recall and reading comprehension tests were employed. Two multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between attention allocation and reading performance. The results indicate that increased attention to seductive sentences, not to seductive pictures, was a major determinant of poor performance in terms of both recall and reading comprehension, suggesting that increased attentional allocation to seductive sentences may hinder information retrieval and produce a less coherent mental representation of given text.
Department of Molecular Medicine, Kyungpook National University College of Medicine, Daegu, South Korea; Department of Radiology, Kyungpook National University Hospital, Daegu, South Korea.
Yongmin
Y
Chang
Department of English Education, Kyungpook National University Teachers College, Daegu, South Korea. Electronic address: sungmookchoi@knu.ac.kr.
Sungmook
S
Choi
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading; D055815:Young Adult
Eye tracking; Gaze duration; Reading comprehension; Recall; Seductive details