Macrostructure construction and organization in the processing of multipletext passages

This paper addresses the issue of macrostructural processing of multiple te xt passages. Two levels of macrostructural processing, macrostructural cons truction (extracting important information) and organization (structuring s elected information) may be at work during complex text comprehension. Thre e experiments examined the effects of various textual and situational facto rs on macrostructural construction and organization. College students were asked to read small sets of documents presented in hypertext format. The st udents' reading strategies as well as their written reports were analyzed. Experiment 1 showed that headings and presentation format influence macrost ructural organization. Experiment 2 showed that task requirements tend to i nfluence macrostructure construction and organization, whereas presentation conditions, such as the marking of important information and the presentat ion order, can affect both levels of macrostructural processing. Finally, e xperiment 3 indicated that there is an interaction between global and local headings and the construction and organization of macrostructure. The thre e experiments also suggested that subjects can be characterized based on ho w well they deal with macrostructural construction and organization. It is concluded that the comprehension of hypertext involves higher levels of cog nitive processing which ensure the structuring of multiple text information .