THE SELECTIVE ATTENTION STRATEGY AS A TIME-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 being important, being interesting, or being presented in unusual language) better than text information that is less salient. Also, both categories of readers tend to focus greater duration and intensity of attention on salient text segments. Researchers have taken these two results to mean that selective use of attention causes salient text information to be better learned and recalled; however, despite reading more quickly and thereby allocating less attention duration to salient text segments, more successful readers always learn considerably more of both salient and less salient text elements than do less successful readers. The present study was designed to investigate differences in how more successful readers and less successful readers use selective attention and whether or not these differences influence what is learned and recalled by the two groups. The results revealed that more successful readers used reading patterns that were different from those used by less successful readers. These differing reading patterns might be one reason why more successful readers learn and recall more text information than less successful readers. The discussion focuses on the different aspects of the selective attention strategy and on the advantages of using time-series data analysis techniques to isolate different reading patterns. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.