Type of verbatim question interspersed in text: A new look at the position effect

Abstract

Verbatim adjunct questions were developed from sentences rated by college students as high or low in importance to the overall meaning or structure of the experimental passage. The high structural importance pre- and postquestion groups were equal in recall of the questioned statements, and both groups outperformed the reading only control group. On the other hand, subjects who were given low structural importance prequestions recalled more questioned material than those who received low structural importance postquestions, and, in this case, only the prequestion treatment excelled the control condition. Finally, low structural importance prequestions depressed incidental recall below that of the control group. No other questioning treatment influenced incidental recall. These results support earlier research using a different question typology in suggesting that the generalization that postquestions yield greater retention than prequestions does not hold for all types of verbatim adjunct questions. © 1976, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.