THE EFFECTS OF HEADLINES AND SUMMARIES ON NEWS COMPREHENSION AND RECALL

In two experiments, we attempted to analyze the effects of newspaper a rticle headlines and summaries on final comprehension and recall. Duri ng the first experiment, the participants consisted of 117 high school students from the 9th grade, 68 from the 11th grade, 79 first year Ps ychology students from the Autonoma University of Madrid and 66 fifth year Journalism students from the Complutense University of Madrid. Th e subjects were randomly required to read a news report in one of the following experimental conditions: (1) he whole news article (headline , summary and text), (2) the headline and text, (3) the summary and te xt, and (4), the text only. The data from immediate and delayed free r ecall tasks were recorded. The results showed that the structure of th e news article did not influence the recall and that there were differ ences among groups in the amount and quality of recall. The headline a nd the summary modified by the use of macrostructural criteria constit uted additional elements introduced into the second experiment to prov ide a contrast with the original headline and summary. The results sho wed that an improvement in article recall did occur with the modified version in comparison with the original version. These two experiments have confirmed that the aims and criteria of journalists differ from those held by the authors of scientific texts and question whether the reading strategies applied are the same in both cases.