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Instructional Science 8 (1979) 81-90

© ElsevierScientificPublishing Company,Amsterdam - Printed in the Netherlands

DEPRESSIVE E F F E C T S OF U N D E R L I N I N G AND ADJUNCT

QUESTIONS ON CHILDREN'S RE CA L L OF T E X T

JOHN P. RICKARDS and PETER R. DENNER

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., UoS.A.

ABSTRACT

Half of a sample of ten-year-old school children (N = 69) were given conceptual

postquestions after every paragraph of text, while the other half were not given any post-
questions. Additionally, these children either generated their own underlining of one
sentence per paragraph, received text with topic sentences underlined for them, or were
given text without underlining of any kind. The results indicated that the readers pre-
ponderantly chose for underlining subordinate, passage details rather than superordinate,
conceptual material, even when given conceptual postquestions focusing on the topic
sentences of the passage. Recall of passage details was most depressed when children were
provided with both underlining and conceptual postquestions. These results suggested a
comprehension rather than a metacomprehension deficit, whereby underlining and adjunct
questions may hinder rather than help recall performance in young readers.

Introduction

Brown and Smiley (1977) have f ound that while eight- and ten-year-old
school children could not differentiate text items in terms o f their relative
importance to the overall meaning o f a passage, they nonetheless recalled the
most imp o r tan t items o f the passage. F r o m this Brown and Smiley concluded
that such children have a " m e t a c o m p r e h e n s i o n " rather than a comprehension
deficit. That is, the children under s t ood what t hey read to a certain degree,
and so recalled it quite well, but they did n o t have knowledge o f their own
knowledge or o f their ways o f acquiring knowledge (Brown, 1977). More
specifically, these children were not explicitly aware o f the hierarchical
structure o f the passage and o f the benefit o f using this structure as an aid
to comprehension and recall. Brown and Smiley (1977) argued that the use
o f various cueing devices might r em e dy this m et acom prehensi on deficit by
helping young readers in "identifying i m p o r t a n t features o f a passage (p. 7)".
Two o f the most c o m m o n l y r e c o m m e n d e d cueing devices are adjunct
questions and underlining (see Cronbach, 1977, p. 465 and Yelon and Wein-
stein, 1977, p. 155 and pp. 1 7 4 - 1 7 6 ) . Yet, practically no research on these
82

study strategies using young children as experimental subjects has been

reported in the literature.
In the two adjunct question studies with children (Rickards and Hatcher,
1978; Swenson and Kulhavy, 1974) that have been reported, no firm conclu-
sion can be reached regarding the effectiveness of adjunct questions on prose
processing. In one study (Swenson and Kulhavy, 1974), the results of the
comparisons between the experimental groups and the control groups
(reading only and questions only) are not reported. Hence, even though the
authors concluded that adjunct postquestions only influenced the learning of
intentional (questioned) material, they did not provide any data and asso-
ciated statistical analyses to support their conclusion. In the other study
(Rickards and Hatcher, 1978), collapsing across good and poor readers there
was no overall effect due to adjunct postquestions on either intentional or
incidental (nonquestioned) learning. Consequently, at the present time it is
impossible to say what effect, if any, adjunct questions have on children's
comprehension of prose material.
In the area of underlining research, no experiment has been reported in
the literature in which children served as subjects. Hence, we currently have
no knowledge of how underlining influences children's text comprehension.
Whether with adults or with children, virtually no research has been
done comparing the relative effectiveness of different study strategies, such
as underlining and adjunct questions. It would seem that underlining might
well be a more effective encoding device than adjunct questions. In the first
place, underlining is less reliant on memory than questioning. One must
remember the text material in order to answer a given question (post-
question) or one must remember the question (prequestion) while reading
the associated text. Additionally, underlining seems to be a more explicit
encoding device than adjunct questions, since the material to be learned in a
text is directly underlined as opposed to being merely questioned about
before or after reading the associated text. It may be that young children
who are lacking adequate metacomprehension skills would find this explicit-
ness particularly beneficial. And, if main ideas in a text were underlined, it
may facilitate the recall of the entire passage, as it did in an experiment
reported by Cashen and Leicht (1970) using adult readers.
More recent research (Rickards and August, 1975) has demonstrated
even better performance when adult readers did their own underlining, at
least when such underlining was restricted to one sentence per paragraph.
Rickards and August (1975) argued that this restriction was highly influential
in directing their adult readers to underline sentences that were relatively
high in terms of their importance to the overall meaning of the passage. The
results of both the Brown and Smiley (1977) experiment and of another
quite similar experiment (Kendall and Mason, 1978) seem to suggest, how-
ever, that ten-year-old school children may not choose to underline the most
 83

important sentences o f the passage. If this were to occur, subject-generated

underlining would probably not benefit overall performance a great deal.
In light of the above, we predicted that experimenter-provided under-
lining would be a more effective encoding device for children than either
subject-generated underlining or adjunct postquestions. Provided the reader
can discern the structure o f the passage, such enhanced encoding should
increase recall of both underlined and nonunderlined passage material since
the underlined topic sentences can serve as subsumers for the lower-level
details o f the passage (the nonunderlined material).

Method

SAMPLE

The subjects for this experiment were on the average ten years o f age.
They were drawn from several fifth grade classes in an elementary school
located in a rural midwestern town in the USA. The students were randomly
assigned in equal numbers (n = 12) to each o f the experimental conditions.
However, since several students did not participate, the number o f students
in each treatment was not equal (n = 1 0 - 1 2 ) . The total number o f subjects
was 69.

MATERIALS

The passage used in this study was a modification of the one employed
by Rickards and DiVesta (1974). Alterations were made to render the passage
appropriate for elementary school children. Readability level o f the modified
passage as computed by the Dale-Chall formula was early fifth grade and by
the Lorge formula was late fifth grade.
Each paragraph o f the 800-word passage was organized around a differ-
ent aspect (such as the geography, economy, history) of a fictitious African
nation called, "Mala." Hence, the paragraphs were unrelated in specific con-
tent other than their overall relationship to Mala. Each o f the paragraphs
was typed on separate 5" × 8" sheets of paper.
To illustrate, one text segment is presented b.~l-w:

The southern part of Mala can best be described as a desert. Rainfall is less than 2
inches per year in southern Mala. The soils in the southern part of Mala are either
sandy or rocky. In the summertime, temperatures have been recorded as high as
135 degrees in southern Mala.

As can be seen in the above example, each paragraph contained a topic

84

sentence (superordinate concept) and three subordinate sentences. Each

subordinate sentence represented either a specific example of the concept
contained in the topic sentence or a particularization of the defining attri-
butes comprising the concept. The latter-mentioned type of superordinate-
subordinate relationship is exemplified in the text segment presented above.
For instance, for an area to be a desert, it must have little rainfall, high tem-
peratures and soil reflective of these conditions. In the above text segment
each subordinate sentence provides a particular instance of the attributes
which collectively constitute the concept "desert".
For each of the paragraphs conceptual questions were developed and
inserted in the reading materials for the appropriate treatment conditions.
Each conceptual question was typed on a separate sheet of paper. The ques-
tions were inserted immediately after (postquestions) the paragraphs to
which they related. (We used postquestions instead of prequestions in this
experiment because postquestions typically produce the same amount of
intentional learning as prequestions while producing more incidental learning
than prequestions, see Rickards and Denner, 1978, for a review.) The con-
ceptual postquestions required the readers to organize paragraph details in
relation to the concepts contained both in the questions themselves and in
the topic sentences of the paragraphs to which they referred. Using the text
segment illustrated above, the conceptual postquestion was, "Why is southern
Mala considered a desert?"
When underlining was provided by the experimenter, the topic sentence
in each paragraph was underlined. The topic sentence (whether underlined or
not) appeared as the first or last sentence in the paragraph. The position of
the topic sentence (first or last) was made on a random basis, but was consis-
tent across treatment conditions. Referring to the sample paragraph above,
the sentence underlined was, "The southern part of Mala can best be described
as a desert." When subjects were requested to underline one sentence in each
paragraph, they marked directly on the materials themselves using a pencil or
pen.

DESIGN

The children read each of the paragraphs which were either followed by
postquestions or no questions of any kind. Additionally, each child was
either asked to underline one sentence per paragraph, provided with under-
lining of the topic sentence of each paragraph, or read the paragraphs without
underlining of any kind. In each of the underlining conditions listed above,
one and only one sentence was either underlined by the subject or provided
with underlining by the experimenter. Thus, the design of the experiment
was a 2 (postquestion or no postquestion) X 3 (provided underlining, gener-
ated underlining, or no underlining) between subjects factorial design. Post
 85

hoc mean comparisons were made using the Newman-Keuls procedure. Con-
trol group comparisons were conducted using the Dunnett's procedure
(Winer, 1971).
The two dependent variables derived from the completion test were
recall of: 1)Superordinate concepts from the topic sentences and given in
the conceptual postquestions; and 2)Subordinate details from the state-
ments in each paragraph other than the topic sentences. These two depen-
dent measures were analyzed using the 2 × 3 factorial design described above
via multivariate analysis of variance procedures. Since the number of children
in each cell was not the same, we employed the unweighted means technique
in the multivariate analysis of variance.

PROCEDURE

The experimental materials were administered by the experimenter

during regular class sessions. All children were assembled in a common area
and then were randomly assigned to the treatments. The children were told
that the purpose of the study was to examine ways of helping students to
better understand what they read. The children were informed that they
would read a passage describing a fictitious African nation called "Mala".
Readers receiving underlined statements were informed that one sentence
per paragraph was underlined for them, and they should pay particular at-
tention to such sentences. The subject-generated underlining groups were
directed to underline one, and only one, sentence of their choice in each
paragraph. They were also told to underline the sentence to which they
wanted to give careful attention.
Children receiving conceptual postquestions were instructed to answer
each question to themselves. In doing so, they were not allowed to turn back
to the page of text associated with any given conceptual postquestion.
Readers receiving combined treatments were given instructions appropriate
to both conditions. Finally, the children in the reading only control group
were told to read the paragraphs and pay careful attention to the informa-
tion contained in each paragraph.
All the readers were instructed to read the paragraphs at their own
pace. They were also informed that they would be given a test over what
they read immediately after they finished reading the entire passage. No
indication was given regarding the precise nature of the test. It should be
noted that under these conditions (unlimited time and test motivation) an
extension of Klare's (1976) model would lead one to predict no significant
difference or only a marginal significant difference between the experimen-
tal groups and the control group.
As the children finished reading the passage, they were given the com-
pletion test. Sixteen of the items tested for recall of the superordinate con-
86

cepts contained in the topic sentence of each of the paragraphs. The remaining
48 items measured recall of the subordinate details from all of the paragraphs.
The sentences employed in the completion measure were nearly identical in
phrasing to the passage sentences with an important word or phrase omitted
from each one. Variation in phrasing and synonyms were considered correct
if they did not alter the meaning of a given sentence.

Results

The subject-generated underlining condition resulted in 83% detail-

oriented statements underlined of which 55% were recalled, and only 17%
superordinate conceptual statements underlined of which 49% were recalled.
The subject-generated underlining and conceptual postquestion condition
yielded 75% detail-oriented statements underlined of which 51% were recal-
led, and only 25% conceptual level statements underlined of which 37% were
recalled.
Hence, left to their own devices, these ten-year-old readers generally
choose factual rather than conceptual statements to underline, even when
asked to underline only one sentence per paragraph. When asked to under-
line only one sentence per paragraph and also given conceptual postquestions
which focused on the topic sentence (conceptual level material) of each para-
graph, they still choose detailed statements for underlining the vast majority
of the time.
As can be seen by the above data, in the subject-generated underlining
and conceptual postquestion condition what was underlined and what was
questioned very often were not the same thing. Consequently, any overall
comparisons among the various experimental groups for recall of questioned
and non-questioned material or for recall of underlined and nonunderlined
material were not possible. The most sensible analysis of the completion test
seemed to be in terms of recall of subordinate material and recall of super-
ordinate concepts, as mentioned above. Table I displays the individual cell
means for these two dependent measures.
TABLE I

Means of the Various Conditions of the Experiment for the Two Dependent Measures

Conceptual No conceptual
postquestion p__ostquestion
Subject- Experimenter- Subject- Experimenter-
generated provided No generated provided No
underlining underlining underlining underlining underlining underlining
(n=10) (n=12) (n= I1) (n=ll) (n=ll) (n=12)

M 8.D. M S.D. M S.D. M 8.D. M S.D. M 8.D.

Subordinate details 22-70 7.50 12.42 6-73 20-55 8.68 20.27 8.60 17-27 6.69 22.33 8.46
Superordinateconcepts 4.80 2.70 2.75 2.30 4-09 3.18 4-82 2-09 4.82 2.09 4.83 2-59
 87

The 2 × 3 unweighted means multivariate analysis of variance for

recall of superordinate concepts and subordinate details yielded a significant
main effect for the underlining factor F(4/120) = 2.93, p < 0.02. A subse-
quent 2 × 3 unweighted means univariate analysis of variance for recall of
subordinate de tails revealed a significant main effect for underlining. F(2/61) =
5-44, p < 0.007. Post hoc mean comparisons using the Newman-Keuls proce-
dure indicated that groups provided with underlining of the topic sentences
(M = 14.74) retained significantly fewer (p < 0.05) passage details than
groups asked to underline one sentence per paragraph themselves (M = 21.48)
or those given no underlining at all (M = 21.43). These latter two groups did
not differ significantly from each other. These results suggested that providing
the children with underlining of the topic sentence of each paragraph inter-
fered with retention of the subordinate details associated with each topic
sentence that was underlined.
Control group comparisons using the Dunnett's procedure demon-
strated that the experimenter-provided underlining and conceptual post-
question group (M = 12-42) recalled significantly fewer subordinate details
than the reading only control group (M -- 22.33), t(6/61) = 3-11, p < 0.01.
The 2 × 3 unweighted means univariate analysis of variance for recall of
superordinate concepts did not reveal a significant main effect for under-
lining, and so no post hoc tests were conducted. It does appear, however,
that the group provided with underlining and conceptual postquestions
(M = 2.75) recalled slightly fewer superordinate concepts than the reading
only control group (M = 4-83).
In conclusion, adjunct postquestions alone did not influence any aspect
of recall. Experimenter-provided underlining in combination with conceptual
postquestions significantly depressed recall of the passage details and slightly
depressed recall of the concepts contained in both the topic sentences of the
passage and the adjunct postquestions themselves. Generative underlining
plus postquestions did not improve or impair performance at all.

Discussion

The results of this experiment clearly support the findings of an earlier

study with children in which the authors concluded that "inspection behavior
is a markedly different task with younger learners" (Swenson and Kulhavy,
1974, p. 215). Unlike experiments conducted with adult readers, underlining
did not serve as an "encoding cue" (Crouse and Idstein, 1972), i.e. as an aid
in the recall of underlined material, or as an aid to the assimilation of passage
details (Cashen and Leicht, 1970). Furthermore, contrary to findings with
adult readers (Rickards and August, 1975), subject-generated underlining did
not aid retention. And finally, the failure to find a direct effect for adjunct
88

postquestions runs counter to the findings of the vast majority of research

done with adults (see Rickards and Denner, 1978).
More information must be considered in order to determine whether
these differences were due to a comprehension or a metacomprehension
deficit in these children. Both a metacomprehension and a comprehension
deficit would lead these readers to choose details rather than main ideas for
underlining. However, unlike predictions for a comprehension deficit, children
with a metacomprehension deficit should recall main ideas rather than details
and their recall should be enhanced by experimenter-provided underlining
and to a lesser extent by inserted conceptual questions.
When asked to choose one sentence per paragraph to underline, these
ten-year-old children chose subordinate-level, detailed statements 83% of the
time. In another experiment (Rickards and August, 1975), adult readers
given the same set of instructions almost always chose sentences containing
the main ideas of the passage. Collectively, these results conform to those of
Brown and Smiley (1977) wherein ten-year-old children were not able to
differentiate text sentences in terms of their relative importance to the over-
all meaning of a passage, while their adult readers were able to so differentiate
the sentences.
Following the suggestion of Brown and Smiley (1977) we employed
explicit cueing through adjunct postquestions and underlining to remedy the
purported metacomprehension deficit of children at this level of schooling.
However, even when our ten-year-old children were given postquestions
focusing on the main ideas of the passage, they persisted in choosing to
underline detail-oriented statements 75% of the time. And, under these con-
ditions, the children recalled fewer of the conceptual level statements (37%)
than of the detailed statements (51%) they had underlined. Furthermore,
when children in this experiment were provided with the main ideas of each
paragraph underlined for them as well as with postquestions containing the
main ideas of each paragraph, they still recalled a greater percentage of sub-
ordinate details (26%) than main ideas (17%).
This marked tendency of children to recall details instead of main ideas
did not occur in the experiment by Brown and Smiley (1977). In fact, just
the opposite occurred in their study in which no structural cues were provided.
It appears, therefore, that the primary deficit of children in the present in-
vestigation was one of comprehension rather than metacomprehension.
Quite likely reading aids such as those employed here will be ineffective un-
less the reader is capable of at least some tacit understanding of the thematic
structure of the passage being read.
The differences between our results and those of Brown and Smiley
(1977) may be related in part to the different kinds of prose material used in
each case. The passage used here was descriptive prose, whereas Brown and
Smiley employed narrative prose. It could be that main ideas are more easily
 89

extracted from narrative prose due to greater experience in listening to and

reading stories in school and at home and/or the learned expectancies o f
children to derive themes from stories as opposed to details from t e x t b o o k -
like material. It could also be the case that these less sophisticated readers
benefit from the presence in narrative prose o f explicit linguistic links such
as "because," " t h e n , " "before," etc. And finally, in narrative prose, the most
important information may be more salient than it is in a textual passage,
thereby leading to greater recall o f main ideas in narrative material. More
research should be done to further explore these issues.
There are at least two other lines o f research that suggest themselves at
this point: one would involve training studies wherein specific training in the
use of study strategies is given prior to their administration as experimental
treatments. Would such training enable children to more effectively use these
study strategies in comprehension and recall? Another line of research would
involve developmental studies wherein one would assess at what point each
o f these aids become effective (sans-training) in enhancing passage recall.
Such investigations could provide significant insight into our understanding
of the development of comprehension and metacomprehension processes.
In the meantime, we must exercise extreme caution in recommending
the use of adjunct postquestions and underlining for all students. These
results clearly suggest that for ten-year-old readers such aids may not really
be aids at all. Quite the contrary, they may hinder rather than help per-
tbrmance.

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Brown, A. L. and Smiley, S. S. (1977). "Rating the importance of\structural units of
prose passages: a problem of metacognitive development," Child Development, 48:
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Cashen, V. W. and Leicht, K. L. (1970). "Role of the isolation effect in a formal educa-
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