Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

Aids to Audience Decision Making 165

Section Headings

Like good titles, good section headings not only attract attention, they also aid comprehension and

recall by activating the appropriate schema.^237 Informative section headings help readers understand

the prose content that immediately follows them.^238 Section headings also help readers identify the

topics and organization of a text as they read.^239 In addition, section headings enable readers to

more accurately summarize a text after they read it.^240 In a study of the effects of section headings,

students were asked to read texts both with and without section headings. Students who read the

texts with section headings had signifi cantly higher scores on both comprehension and recall than

those who read the same texts without the headings.^241

Informative section headings in either statement or question form (e.g., “The Management

Team Is Respected Industry Wide” versus “How Qualifi ed Is the Management Team?”) can help

audiences recall and retrieve information from both familiar and unfamiliar texts.^242 But vague

section headings can mislead readers. A study of government regulations found that the section

headings of the original regulations were uninformative nouns and phrases: “Defi nitions,” “General

Policy,” “Requirements,” “Procedure,” and “Use of Advance Payment Funds.” When the uninfor-

mative headings were replaced with more informative ones (e.g., “Setting Up the Bank Account”),

readers performed signifi cantly better both in predicting what information would follow each

heading and in matching headings with the appropriate text.^243

Topic Sentences

Topic sentences are another aid to schema activation and comprehension. Starting a paragraph

with a topic sentence improves both reading speed and accuracy of recall, it also enhances the

reader’s ability to identify the main point of the paragraph.^244 Systematically grouping sentences by

topic produces better recall than arranging sentences randomly.^245 Hierarchically structuring major

points before minor points makes prose easier to recall as well.^246

An Introductory Decision Matrix

Novice audience members who have never made a particular type of decision before need to

be educated about the appropriate schema before they can activate it.^247 A think-aloud study of

novices reading revisions of a policy for automobile liability insurance found that the novices had

diffi culty comprehending the fi rst revision even though it solved all of the lexical and structural

problems in the original policy. The novices often raised the wrong questions about the revised

policy. For example, they asked why the policy did not mention deductibles and their own injuries

and damages. The researchers concluded that the novices lacked the appropriate schema for under-

standing the different types of car insurance.

To provide the needed schema, the researchers started the fi nal revision of the policy with a matrix

that described and contrasted different types of car insurance. Although the fi nal revision was four

times as long as the original policy, it took the novices only half the time to read. In addition, the fi nal

revision had a comprehension error rate of 22% versus an error rate of 40% for the original. Moreover,

the fi nal revision evoked no complaints from the novices, whereas the original prompted many.^248

Initial Contextual Information

Any initial contextual information—titles, section headings, topic sentences, agendas, outlines, as

well as previews that combine graphics and text—can enhance comprehension and recall of docu-

ments and presentations.^249 Starting a document or presentation with an overview of its purpose