THE ROLE OF ATTENTION AS A MEDIATOR OF TH E INFLUENCE OF INTEREST ON LEARNING

This article presents a conceptual replication of an experiment conduc ted by Shirey & Reynolds (1988). Unexpectedly, these authors have foun d a negative relation between interest and attention and, at the same time, a positive relation between interest and retention. It was our g oal to replicate Shirey and Reynolds' findings with a different sample and different learning materials. In addition, we controlled for the subjective importance of the learning material and distinguished betwe en verbatim and meaning-oriented forms of learning. Our results confir m those of Shirey and Reynolds. Finally, suggestions for interpreting the results and conducting future research are made.