The Effects of Adjunct Questions on Prose Learning

Abstract

The research literature on the effects of factual and higher order adjunct questions is reviewed. The influence of 13 design variables on the direction and size of adjunct-questions effects was investigated. Adjunct questions of all cognitive levels have a strong facilitative effect on repeated test questions and a weaker effect on test questions related to the adjunct questions. Unrelated test questions are affected negatively by factual prequestions and by factual postquestions when study time is controlled. Factual postquestions have a positive effect on unrelated questions only when no time restrictions are imposed. Effect sizes are found to be related to text length, density of adjunct questions, adjunct-question format, test-question format, and the level of performance in the control group; they are unrelated to subjects’ age, the interval between reading task and test, whether or not subjects are allowed to consult the text while answering the adjunct questions, and the average distance between adjunct questions and relevant text information. When compared to factual adjunct questions, higher order adjunct questions lead to improved performance on repeated, related, and unrelated higher order test questions, and possibly also on unrelated factual test questions. This indicates that higher order adjunct questions may have a more general facilitative effect than factual adjunct questions. The analysis of a recent adjunct-questions study illustrates the role that review results can play in (re)interpreting experimental findings.