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Journal
of
Educational
Psychology
1980, Vol.
72, No. 2,
209-225
Different
Recall Protocols
for
Technical
Texts
Due
to
Advance Organizers
Richard
E.
Mayer
and
Bruce
K.
Bromage
University
of
California,
Santa
Barbara
In
two
experiments,
108
subjects read
a
text concerning
a new
computer pro-
gramming
language, with
an
advance organizer given either before
or
after
reading.
On a
subsequent recall
test,
there were different patterns
of
perfor-
mance.
The
before
group scored higher
on
recall
of
conceptual idea units,
produced more
appropriate
intrusions,
and
made more novel inferences;
the
after
group scored higher
on
recall
of
technical idea units
and
produced more
inappropriate intrusions, connectives,
and
vague summaries. Results support
the
idea
that
the
locus
of the
effect
was at
encoding rather than retrieval
and
favor
an
assimilation encoding theory.
When
a
subject reads
a
technical
text
with
which
he or she is
unfamiliar, what
is
the
effect
of an
advance organizer
that
pro-
vides
a
familiar context?
The
present
arti-
cle
explores
the
hypothesis
that
advance
organizers,
under certain conditions,
may
influence
the
encoding
of the
text
during
learning and, hence,
the
structuring
of new
information
in
memory.
The
present
study
tested
this idea
by
determining whether
it is
possible
to
tell
from
a
subject's recall pro-
tocol whether
the
subject learned with
an
organizer
presented before versus after
reading
a
text.
This
introduction
summa-
rizes
the
past
findings
concerning
the
effects
of
organizers
on
learning, critiques
the
tra-
ditional approach
to
studying advance
or-
ganizers,
and
offers
several theories
to be
tested.
Advance organizers. During
the
1960s
Ausubel
and his
colleagues published
a
series
of
reports
that
provided both
an
empirical
and
theoretical basis
for the
effects
of ad-
vance
organizers
on
learning
from
text
(Au-
subel,
1960, 1968; Ausubel
&
Fitzgerald,
1961, 1962; Ausubel
&
Youssef, 1963; Fitz-
gerald
&
Ausubel, 1963).
For
example,
in a
This research
was
supported
by
Grant
SED-77-19875
from
the
National Science Foundation.
We
wish
to
thank Larry Hubert
for his
advice con-
cerning
the
statistical analysis
of the
data
in
Experi-
ment
2.
Requests
for
reprints should
be
sent
to
Richard
E.
Mayer,
Department
of
Psychology,
University
of
Cali-
fornia,
Santa Barbara,
California
93106.
typical study (Ausubel
&
Youssef,
1963),
college
students read
a
2,500-word passage
on
Buddhism after reading either
a
"com-
parative advance organizer" pointing
to the
relation
between Buddhism
and
Christianity
or
a
nonorganizing historical introduction.
Retention
for the
target passage,
as
mea-
sured
by an
achievement
test,
was
higher
for
the
advance organizer group, presumably
due
to the
learners' being encouraged
to
understand
new
concepts (Buddhism)
in
terms
of
existing knowledge about Chris-
tianity.
In a
summary
of his
work, Ausubel
(1968)
defined
advance organizers
as
"appro-
priately relevant
and
inclusive introductory
materials
. . .
introduced
in
advance
of
learning
...
and
presented
at a
higher level
of
abstraction,
generality,
and
inclusiveness"
(p.
148).
The
function
of the
organizer
was
"to
provide ideational
scaffolding
for the
stable incorporation
and
retention
of the
more detailed
and
differentiated material
that
follows"
(p.
148).
This
was
accom-
plished
by
manipulating "the availability
to
the
learner
of
relevant
and
proximately
in-
clusive
subsumers"
(p.
136).
Although
the
initial work
of
Ausubel
and
his
colleagues seemed promising, there
has
not
been clear research support
in
subse-
quent years.
For
example,
in a
recent review
Mayer (1977) noted
that
Ausubel's studies
"generally found only small advantages
in
recall
due to
advance organizers"
(p.
374).
In
a
review
that
included more recent studies
Copyright
1980
by the
American
Psychological
Association, Inc. 0022-0663/80/7202-0209$00.75
209
