Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that negated text (i.e., text that contains words such as no, not, or never) presents considerable challenges to accurate reading comprehension. Furthermore, while metacomprehension judgements have indicated an awareness of this challenge on the readers’ part, this insight has not translated into improvements in comprehension of this type of text. Previous research in reading has also demonstrated that emotional text, as compared to non-affective text, enhances attention to the text, resulting in accurate comprehension. The present study aimed to determine whether this strategy would impact negated text similarly. Results confirmed that negated text detrimentally impacted reading comprehension accuracy, and that overall, emotional text positively impacted comprehension accuracy. However, metacomprehension ratings suggested that while readers were aware of the increased difficulty presented by negated text, and also believed that emotion would help comprehension. Unfortunately, negation comprehension was not impacted by the affective nature of the text. These results indicate that negated text is sufficiently difficult to not benefit from the presence of emotion, and further investigation into improving comprehension of negated text is needed.

摘要

先前的研究表明，否定的文本（即包含诸如no，not或never这样的词的文本）对准确的阅读理解提出了相当大的挑战。此外，尽管元理解判断表明读者已经意识到了这一挑战，但这种见识并没有转化为对这类文本的理解能力的提高。先前的阅读研究也表明，与非情感性文本相比，情感性文本可以增强对文本的注意力，从而产生准确的理解力。本研究旨在确定该策略是否会类似地影响否定文本。结果证实，否定的文本会不利地影响阅读理解的准确性，而总体而言，情绪化的文本会对阅读理解的准确性产生积极的影响。但是，元综合评分表明，尽管读者意识到否定文字会增加难度，并且相信情感会帮助理解。不幸的是，否定理解不受文本的情感性质影响。这些结果表明，否定文本足够难以从情感的存在中受益，因此需要进一步研究以提高对否定文本的理解。