Why generating delayed summaries improves metacomprehension accuracy for regular and poor readers

A key to effective text comprehension is the ability to judge whether information presented in the text has been understood. A frequently-used method to measure one's ability to monitor comprehension is for a reader to read a text, rate his or her comprehension of the text, and then take a test over the reading material. Monitoring accuracy is operationalized as the correlation between the reader's comprehension ratings and performance on the comprehension test, known as metacomprehension accuracy. Considering the importance of metacomprehension accuracy, it is important to discover ways to improve it. In this study, one intervention, summarization, was investigated to assess its contribution to improving metacomprehension accuracy. Another dimension investigated was differences in metacomprehension accuracy between more capable readers and poor readers.; The study used a mixed design, with reading level a between-subject variable and summarization condition a within-subject variable. Each subject completed each condition: writing no-summary, writing an immediate-summary, and writing a delayed-summary. During each session, subjects read five texts and answered 10 multiple-choice questions for each text, and then responded to questions designed to determine the bases of their comprehension ratings during each session.; Two hypotheses to explain differences in metacomprehension accuracy for the immediate-summary condition versus the delayed-summary condition were proposed: the different cues hypothesis and the same cues hypothesis. The patterns of cues used to make comprehension ratings show that readers use different cues from the immediate-summary condition to the delayed-summary condition to make their comprehension ratings, resulting in greater monitoring accuracy. Additionally, accuracy increases when readers decrease the number of cues they utilize to make a comprehension rating from the immediate- to the delayed-summary condition. Accuracy also increases when readers change to using more appropriate cues, and it decreases when readers change to using less appropriate cues.; These findings hold for both reading level populations, demonstrating that poor readers are capable of improving their monitoring accuracy. Because improved accuracy can lead to more effective self-regulation of study and higher test performance, writing delayed summaries may be an effective instructional intervention worth adopting.