Aspects of Comprehension 585or planning. Certainly, contributions to conversations occa-
sionally fail and repairs must be made, for example, by repeti-
tion or rephrasing. However, a surprisingly large portion of
conversation is involved in demonstrating positive under-
standing and, considering the multiple processes involved in
each exchange, conversation proceeds with remarkable ease.
Clearly, conversation benefits from the continuous
efforts of participants to establish that comprehension of
contributions has been successful. Conversation also is
highly practiced and individuals can be considered experts
in contributing to discourse. Normally, participants also ben-
efit from an inherent interest in the conversation at hand.
Interest and motivation have long been presumed to be im-
portant factors in comprehension, but the manner in which
they influence conversational or text comprehension is not
well understood.
Purpose and Interest
Clearly, factors internal to the comprehender can have as
much or more influence on ultimate learning as do text or
conversational factors that either promote or hinder compre-
hension. Generally, factors such as the goals or purpose of the
reader and his or her interest in the text at hand have been
considered to be quite important in understanding compre-
hension. However, it is difficult to specify methods by which
such factors can be objectively measured. Further, it is
unclear by what mechanisms purpose and interest may affect
comprehension processes. It has been suggested that in-
creased interest in a text frees up attentional resources, lead-
ing to increased processing of the text; indeed, recent
research has found that individuals perform a secondary task
faster when reading an interesting as opposed to less interest-
ing text (McDaniel, Waddill, Finstad, & Bourg, 2000). How-
ever, McDaniel et al.’s study did not find a recall benefit
related to text interest, despite the general finding that in-
creased interest results in increased recall for text material
(for a review, see Alexander, Kulikowich, & Jetton, 1994).
The difficulty of reconciling these results simply highlights
the fact that the interactions between purpose, interest, and
other variables internal to the comprehender and their influ-
ence on comprehension is only poorly understood at this
point.
The purpose of text processing is somewhat easier to ma-
nipulate than text interest in that researchers may specify spe-
cific outcomes or products that the comprehender will be
asked to produce after the reading task. Research has demon-
strated that the nature of some educational tasks can promote
certain types of comprehension. For example, requiring
students to write arguments about information promotes
construction of situation models and understanding of infor-
mation (Wiley & Voss, 1999). Regardless of the type of prod-
uct that readers must produce after comprehension, different
purposes during learning may change or influence behaviors
directly related to comprehension performance. Narvaez, van
den Broek, and Ruiz (1999) found that simply manipulating
whether readers had a study or entertainment purpose
changed on-line reading behaviors as well as metacognitive
checks on comprehension. In this study, students who read
expository texts with a study purpose were more likely to re-
peat sections of the text, were more likely to evaluate the text
during reading, and were more likely to acknowledge com-
prehension difficulties related to gaps in the background
knowledge. However, it is interesting to note that some ef-
fects of reader purpose appear to depend upon the type of
text. For example, Narvaez et al. found that strategic behav-
iors for comprehension were weaker for narrative as com-
pared to expository texts.
Regardless of an individual’s purpose in pursuing a text,
interest in the text is clearly relevant to comprehension
processes. Research on this topic varies widely on the type of
interest manipulated (e.g., whether texts are matched to indi-
vidual interests and knowledge, or texts are manipulated to
include details that appeal more generally to readers), but for
the most part has demonstrated that increased interest leads to
increased memory for and comprehension of texts. In a review
of research manipulating both reader background knowledge
and interest, Alexander et al. (1994) argued that most studies
find that interest is positively related to learning from text.
However, they acknowledge that stronger and more consistent
effects are found when interest is predicted by a reader’s prior
knowledge of and long-term interest in a topic rather than by
the specific characteristics of an individual text.
This is not to argue that interest-related characteristics of
an individual text are not influential in text processing. The
effects of seductive details—bits of information in a text that
are considered intrinsically interesting but unimportant to the
major text ideas—are an interesting case. In general, studies
have found that seductive details are well remembered and
sometimes are recalled better than main text ideas (e.g.,
Alexander et al., 1994; Schraw, 1998). Although Schraw
(1998) found that seductive details were remembered better
than main text ideas, he also found that seductive details did
not interfere with recall for global text information. Thus, en-
hancing a text with seductive details may increase interest
and promote memory for such intrinsically interesting infor-
mation, but may do little to improve overall memory for the
topic at hand.
Other types of text manipulations may affect interest with-
out adding unnecessary information to text. Sadoski, Goetz,