Diana Dee-Lucas

Novice Strategies for Processing Scientific Texts.

Three studies examined text features used by novice scientists to determine what is important in scientific texts. Expert and novice physicists selected the 10 most important sentences from physics texts, rated the importance of text sentences, and wrote summaries of physics texts. These data were analyzed to determine (1) the degree to which information type (i.e., definitions, facts, equations, and elaborations) was used as an indicator of importance, (2) the extent to which novices agreed with experts on what was important, and (3) how information type interacted with passage structure (i.e., level in passage hierarchy) in determining importance judgments. Both experts and novices considered definitions to be more important than facts but novices applied this rule more strongly. Both groups considered information high in the passage hierarchy to be more important than lower level information, but hierarchical level had a greater effect on the perceived importance of definitions than facts.

Novice rules for assessing importance in scientific texts

Abstract Previous research shows that content area novices judge certain categories of information (e.g., definitions, facts, equations) as more important than others. The current research tested the hypothesis that novice importance judgements are based on category membership, rather than content differences between categories. Subjects of varying expertise judged the importance of sentences in physics texts when they were presented in one of two forms: definitions or facts (Experiment 1), and equations or their verbal equivalents (Experiment 2). The two sentence versions were always identical in substantive content. Experts and naive subjects (subjects without physics training) judged these variants to be similar in importance. However, beginning physics students judged definition and equation versions as more important. Thus beginning-level students develop rules specifying what categories of information are important, so that sentence category is a salient text feature. Sentence category is irrelevant for experts, who judge importance according to content, and naive subjects, who have not formed expectations regarding the importance of information categories. These results suggest how a content schema might evolve in novice learners.

Attentional strategies for studying scientific texts

Content-area novices develop rules as to what types of information (e.g., definitions, facts, equations) are important in texts (Dee-Lucas & Larkin, 1988). The study reported here indicates that these rules influence text learning. Experts and novices read and recalled science texts. Reading times and recall for different types of content were compared for the two groups. Results indicate that novices’ importance rules function as part of novices’ control schema during reading, influencing their attentional processes and the resulting representation formed for the text. This was evident in qualitative differences between experts and novices in their attentional patterns and text recall. The study also found that the number of passage readings and the passage topic have a greater influence on the reading times of exports, but both groups adjust processing time according to the hierarchical level of the passage content. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for novices learning from texts.

Organization and Comprehensibility in Scientific Proofs, or "Consider a Particle p....".

Scientific texts commonly present principles by first giving a proof and only afterward stating the principle-a «proof-first» organization. This specialized text structure differs from conventional structures in that it lacks thematic information to guide text processing. The current research examined the effects on comprehension of this proof-first organization. This was done by comparing the processing of proof-first texts to that of «principle-first» texts, in which the theme (i.e., the principle) is stated at the beginning

Equations in Scientific Proofs: Effects on Comprehension:

Scientific laws are typically presented with corresponding proofs to justify their correctness and illustrate scientific reasoning. The form of these proofs is commonly a series of logically related equations. This research examined how this equation-based format influences proof comprehension. This was done by comparing learners’ ability to solve problems after studying typical equation-based proofs and matching proofs with equations replaced by verbal equivalents (a verbal format). Verbal proofs produced better performance than equation-based proofs on problems relating to both equations and nonequational proof content. These results suggest that equations in proofs cause learners to shift attention away from nonequational content and that learners have more difficulty processing equations than verbal statements containing the same content.