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The effect of story structure on memory for technical instructions

Dowling, Pamela R.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1261339359

Abstract Details

2009, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology PhD.
Stories represent an important key to how people remember information. Psychology has characterized stories in terms of grammars, which are lists of components typically found in stories (e.g., setting, protagonist, causal sequence etc.). This has a tendency to limit the definition of a story to grammars and negate the importance of ideas such as content. The present research hopes to expand the definition of a story by introducing another set of literature, namely speech act theory. According to speech act theory, conversations include more information than regular text regarding expectations among the conversational participants and common patterns of conversational exchange. By extension, the presence of conversations in stories may affect how stories are comprehended. Participants read and answered questions pertaining to three stories about car repair, all of which contained the same basic story grammar elements. Two versions of the stories were created that enhanced the story grammar components. A speech act version contained present tense conversations. An additional version included some conversations along with references to information found in a technical manual. After adjusting for reading level, the accuracy of participant responses supported the claim that the speech act version of the story was easier to remember than either the story grammar or the technical versions. Total response times also distinguished the speech act version from the other versions. Separate analyses for response times to true and false questions suggested no difference between true and false response times for the speech act version. The analysis of the true and false questions for story grammar and technical story types showed the expected effect for one version of the experimental questions. Speech act stories therefore elicited a different pattern of responses to the same questions. Cognitive theory must accommodate this result, either as a function of reading strategies or processing pathways.
Valerie L. Shalin, PhD (Advisor)
Tamera R. Schneider, PhD (Committee Member)
Debra Steele-Johnson, PhD (Committee Member)
Herbert A. Colle, PhD (Committee Member)
John Flach, PhD (Other)
Joseph F. Thomas, Jr., PhD (Other)
199 p.
Psychology
narrative; story; story grammar; speech acts; technical instruction

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Dowling, P. R. (2009). The effect of story structure on memory for technical instructions [Doctoral dissertation, Wright State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1261339359

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Dowling, Pamela. The effect of story structure on memory for technical instructions. 2009. Wright State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1261339359.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Dowling, Pamela. "The effect of story structure on memory for technical instructions." Doctoral dissertation, Wright State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1261339359

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

wright1261339359
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© 2009, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Wright State University and OhioLINK.