THE EFFECT OF VARIATIONS IN TEXT SUMMARY OPPORTUNITIES ON TEST-PERFORMANCE

The performance of college students who wrote no, 1, or 2 summaries wh ile studying a text for a recall (fill-in-the-blanks) and recognition (multiple-choice) test was compared. Students in the 3 groups were mat ched on total amount of time spent studying. Performance on recall and recognition measures for students who wrote only 1 summary of an enti re text was superior to that of students who wrote no or 2 summaries ( 1 for each half of the text). These results (a) support the hypothesis that less frequent summarizing, which requires greater effort, produc es better performance; (b) rule out total study time as an explanation for the previously found advantage of summarization; and (c) show tha t the effect can be obtained for recognition as well as recall measure s.