THE SELECTIVE ATTENTION STRATEGY AS A TIM E-DEPENDENT PHENOMENON

Both more successful and less successful readers learn and recall text information that is salient (i.e., stands out in some way such as bei ng important, being interesting, or being presented in unusual languag e) better than text information that is less salient. Also, both categ ories of readers tend to focus greater duration and intensity of atten tion on salient text segments. Researchers have taken these two result s to mean that selective use of attention causes salient text informat ion to be better learned and recalled; however, despite reading more q uickly and thereby allocating less attention duration to salient text segments, more successful readers always learn considerably more of bo th salient and less salient text elements than do less successful read ers. The present study was designed to investigate differences in how more successful readers and less successful readers use selective atte ntion and whether or not these differences influence what is learned a nd recalled by the two groups. The results revealed that more successf ul readers used reading patterns that were different from those used b y less successful readers. These differing reading patterns might be o ne reason why more successful readers learn and recall more text infor mation than less successful readers. The discussion focuses on the dif ferent aspects of the selective attention strategy and on the advantag es of using time-series data analysis techniques to isolate different reading patterns. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.