Investigating the effects of paragraphing and notetaking on memory recall and retention

Investigating the effects of paragraphing and notetaking on memory recall and retention

Alexandra Vergel de Dios – Blacktown Girls High School

Abstract

In this study the effect of paragraphing and note taking format on the recall of information was investigated. It extends the current research focused on textual format, typography, fonts and studying and their influence on readability, reading comprehension and observed retention of information. The retention of semantic information was tested in a short study session followed by a short-answer test to determine if a relationship between spaced text, and spaced notes resulted in higher rates of retention. The addition of note taking was added to determine whether there would be an observed effect in mean test scores between different formats of notes. After the data collection and initial data processing, planned contrasts were conducted to additionally test whether the presence of notes (combining both spaced and blocked notes) would also affect memory recall. The results showed that the presence of notes was significant and the interaction between notes and textual format, varied through paragraphing, was also significant.

Keywords: textual format, paragraphing, recall, retention, comprehension, reading, note taking

Literature review

Past studies (Larson and Picard, 2006; Gasser et al., 2005) have focused on typography and its effect on reading comprehension imposing different levels of textual formatting with an emphasis on text design, font type, interword and intraword spacing, text weighting and underlining. The general consensus appears to be that the formatting of texts has been observed to affect the comprehension and thus, the retention and recall of information. Other studies (Udomon et al., 2013; Santa et al., 1979) have addressed studying and note taking. However, few studies have related paragraphing to the retention and recall of textual information and incorporated the aspect of note taking.

Typography has been seen to have a notable effect on relative subjective duration in reading, attributing visual clarity to readability. Larson and Picard (2006) conducted a study testing the effects of poor typography and high quality typography on participants, with those who had the poor typography underestimating their reading time by 24 seconds, while good typography underestimated reading time by over 3 minutes on average. Poor typography was characterised by monospaced fonts (e.g. Courier New) with larger interword spaces, and good typography featured serif fonts (e.g. Times New Roman) with smaller interword spaces. While the study demonstrated the noticeable cognitive impact of typography and the elements of font symmetry and intraword spacing as contributing to visual readability, they did not attempt to explain the reason for the results.

Ljungdahl and Adler (2018) conducted a systematic review on relevant studies conducted with an emphasis on text design, focusing on studies that looked at how design and spacing contributes to reading accuracy, reading rate and reading comprehension. They chose studies that emphasised design rather than the content, and how readers were impacted. Their primary findings were that underlining and bolding words increased reading comprehension while other enhancements such as italics did not produce an effect on participants (Simard, 2008, as cited in Ljungdahl & Adler, 2018). In addition, a noticeable effect on legibility was seen through manipulation of fonts but not in font size, pixel height and font smoothing (Sheedy, 2005, as cited in Ljungdahl & Adler, 2018). This systematic review was useful in the development of the method for the current study and places a similar focus on how text format affects students’ learning outcomes. However, in contrast, this study does not consider how paragraphing and note taking affects the immediate recall of information, through the wider effect on reading comprehension.

The influence of font type on information recall was investigated by Gasser et al. (2005) by testing how serif or sans serif markings and proportional or monospacing influences semantic retention. The results from testing 149 college students rendered serif fonts significantly effective on recall. They discussed that earlier research on reading focused on learning disabilities as found also in Ljungdahl and Adler (2018), while relating their findings to an applied office memo setting rather than on cognitive and neurological effects (Gasser et al., 2005). As much as a 9% increase in recall was found with serif fonts over the other fonts, because their markings make text appear on a line, increasing readability and thus is visually simpler to read, enabling deeper processing of the text (Gasser et al., 2005). Similar to this, the current study considers how the apparent organisation of paragraphing can increase the visibility of the passage compared with blocked text and, as such, aids in better test scores, substantiating greater recall ability and efficient retention. In addition, the appendix of the study provided a useful template for the development of the stimulus passage and short answer questions in the current study as a measure of recall and retention.

Udomon et al. (2013) studied how visual, audio and kinaesthetic stimulation affects memory retention and recall through the use of different stimuli, these were measured through test scores. They also compared the differences between multimodal stimulation with unimodal stimulation, with the added component of writing notes. The study explained that the action of notetaking, as a kinaesthetic stimulation, was more effective than without in aiding retention. Their results found that multimodal stimulation through the pairing of a visual stimulus (e.g. a PowerPoint presentation) and the action of notetaking was more effective in memory retention over the pairing with an auditory stimulus. Similar to this, the study design incorporated the multimodal model, through the combined visual stimulus of a passage and the instructed use of kinaesthetic note taking. From this study, it was hypothesised that the notes groups in the current study would have higher test scores overall than the no notes groups.

Furthermore, the effects of note taking and studying on the retention of prose was investigated by Santa et al. (1979). They placed their focus on addressing the study strategy of taking notes on reading material. The design involved grouping college students into three groups where participants either read with no notes, read with restricted notes or read with unlimited notes on a stimulus passage. Immediate recall was tested directly after reading the passage and delayed recall was tested a week after reading the passage. They found, in concurrence with existing studies, that note taking is not necessary for retaining main points of passages. However, they also found that notetaking is beneficial for readers for the recall of details. The results from this study reinforced the hypothesised significant effect of the presence of notes in the current study in aiding greater recall of details of the passage. The design of the study followed a similar design to Gasser et al. (2005), in the grouping of participants into categorical main effects and the interaction of multiple independent variables into the formation of paired conditions. This was incorporated into the assignment of participants into six paired conditions in the current study. Similar to this, the methodology of the current study incorporates the use of restricted notes and control groups with no notes. Furthermore, this study substantiates the incorporation of the second independent variable of note taking format in the current study as well as explains the significance levels of the planned contrasts carried out in isolating the effect of the presence of notes rather than the individual main effects of the spaced notes and blocked notes. This extended the study of testing both the format of notes coupled with the first independent variable of textual format in concurrence with the focus of determining if paragraphing and note taking affect memory recall.

Scientific research question

Can paragraphing and notetaking affect semantic memory retention and recall?

Scientific hypothesis

• The two groups with spaced text will yield better results than the two groups with block text.

• The two groups with spaced notes will yield better results than the two groups with block notes.

• The conditions of no notes will yield lesser results than the condition of notes.

Methodology

Participants

The participants were taken from the Year 12 cohort of a girls school (N = 60). They were between the ages of 17-19. Participation was on a voluntary basis.

Materials

The materials consisted of the information stimulus paper (spaced text or block text), an instruction sheet on note taking format, and a common test paper with 9 short-answer questions and one ruled A4 paper.

Procedure

The participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions. These were a mixture of two independent variables, with the first being the type of text (spaced or block), and the second being the type of notes (spaced or block or none).

Prior to the in-class examination each participant was asked to sign a consent form in which the ethical considerations were addressed. Individually, the participants were asked to sit in a small study room and were briefed about the layout of the trial. Then they were handed a passage on a fictional disease, a sheet of instructions for the format of note taking and one ruled A4 paper. They were given 10 minutes to both read the passage and instructions and take notes on the ruled A4 paper. Participants were given the option to move on to the test paper if they wanted to finish the reading section before the 10 minute timer had rung. The two groups with no notes skipped the note taking part and were given the full 10 minutes for reading time. After the reading time, all stimuli and notes were removed and they were handed the test paper that consisted of 9 short answer questions. The participants were given 5 minutes to complete the test paper and were collected at the conclusion of the time limit. The test papers were marked and the results were recorded in a two-way ANOVA for data analysis.

Results

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of means (M) and standard deviations (SD) for each condition (n=10).

Table 2 Two-way analysis of variance showing the effects of textual format and note taking format on recall. Including sum of squares (SS), degrees of freedom (df), mean square (MS), F-value and p-value.

Table 3 Sum of squares (SS), observed F-value and p-value results for planned contrasts

Notes: Subscripts explain main effects of text (T1) and notes (N1, N2), and the interactions between text and notes (T1N1, T1N2).

Figure 1. Interaction plot of mean test scores between note taking format and textual format.

A three level instruction factor was created involving spaced notes, blocked notes and no notes. Table 1 summarises the mean test scores for each formulated condition and their standard deviations. As seen in table 2, it was found that the main effect of paragraph spacing in terms of textual format (F1,54=.18, p=.669).

Table 3 shows that note taking format (F1,54=.54, p=.464) did not yield statistically significant results. There was a significant main effects of notes on test scores, F1, 54=4.53, p=.038. This suggests that an improvement in mean test scores for recalling information resulted by using notes (spaced or block). There were significant interactions between textual format (spaced or block) and notes (notes or no notes), (F1,54= 7.24, p=<.05), this elaborates on the observed significance in interaction seen in Table 2. The mean for blocked text with no notes was 3.3 (SD = 1.25), the mean for blocked text with notes was 5.25 (SD = 1.41), the mean for spaced text with no notes was 4.9 (SD = 0.74), and the mean for spaced text with notes was 4.7 (SD = 1.87). The interaction effects of textual format and note-taking format were shown to be non-significant, F1,54=.54, p=.464. The mean for blocked text with spaced notes was 5.1 (SD = 1.10), the mean for blocked text with blocked notes was 5.4 (SD = 1.71), the mean for spaced text with spaced notes was 4.5 (SD = 1.72), and the mean for spaced text with blocked notes was 4.9 (SD = 2.08).

Discussion

The results of this study show that in the presence of notes, either block notes or spaced notes, a statistically significant effect was found for recalling information. The improvement in recall was approximately 21% in the notes condition regardless of the type of notes. This holds practical value for the improvement of the study habits of students. It could suggest that the presence of notes in study could improve overall test scores in students, in terms of recalling information. The use of note taking also extends beyond the general learning environment and could be used in taking down key information from presentations, speeches and interviews. Recall can drive more informed decision making in workplaces and be applied in any practical situation that involves the application of a set of instructions, such as guidelines for the safe use of equipment in relation to workplace hazards.

Why does the use of notes increase recall? It could be due to the added process of writing and the creation of multimodal stimulation (Udomon et al., 2013), with the pairing of the visual stimulus of the passage. The findings suggest that the absence of the notes creates a setting that yields less cohesion of the given information and translates to lower recall ability of semantic information. As was tested, the results also verify that notetaking is beneficial for the recalling of details of texts (Santa et al., 1979), rather than inferences made from reading between the lines or main points. It could also be suggested that the action of writing notes involves the active organisation of information and requires readers to single out key points, details and filter out unsubstantial details and, thus, contributes to a more efficient retrieval strategy. From this viewpoint, substantiated by the findings, the format of notes (either spaced or blocked) is expendable and can relate to the usefulness of notes overall, regardless of a rigid structure, in the immediate recall of information. However, despite previous findings suggesting the benefit of a rigid note taking structure (Santa et al., 1979), whether the restriction of notes contributes to both cases of textual format is yet to be seen.

The interaction between the presence of notes and textual format suggests that the condition of blocked text with notes yielded the highest recall. An interaction effect was not expected. The single effects of textual format and note-taking format was not significant, however the combined use of textual format in line with the presence of notes was found to have a significant effect on the recall of information. These findings suggest that in the presence of notes, both spaced and blocked text formatting appeared to have no effect on test scores, however blocked text appears to cause a slight increase in test scores. A reason for this could be that blocked text takes up more mental resources to read and interpret as the text is not broken into logical paragraphs and the addition of notes involves rereading the paragraph, and facilitates greater comprehension of the text and reinforces their perception of the text (Millis et al., 1998). In the case of blocked text, note taking facilitates the mental organisation of perceptibly disorganised information, whereas in the case of spaced text with note taking, readers could have used less mental resources in organising the information due to the paragraphing of the passage and could have led to less time spent rereading the text for reinforcement. In turn those with the spaced text might have falsely interpreted their greater grasp of the key details and thus did not engage in the mental task of filtering information, in comparison with those given the blocked text. Thus, the decreased test scores in block text without notes can be explained by the lack of the mentally challenging task of organising the information involved in taking notes. Conversely, the increased test scores in spaced text without notes can be attributed to the perception of organised information and perhaps translates to a greater clarity of specific details during the initial reading.

There are points of concern in terms of the methodology of this study. These include the small sample size and the exclusion of the consideration of genders and other ages or literacy levels. The limited range of the participants as a representation of the larger population weighs on the plausibility and the possible generalizability of the results. As such, a conclusive statement cannot be made without considering the possibility of type II errors due to the relatively small number of participants. Despite this, it was observed that there was a small standard deviation across all tested conditions and points to small variability in the study. Also, the lack of access to classrooms, resulted in the use of public areas such as the school library and occupied classrooms persistently throughout the study that could have contributed to the likeliness of systematic errors due to environmental interference. Thus, these methodological limitations open up the consideration for the observed value deviating from the true effects.

There are many other directions to be studied in relation to textual format. The passage used in this study was relatively short, and research can be directed to studying the effect of the length of a piece of information and whether it affects reading comprehension and the retention and ability to recall information immediately. As senior high school students participated in this study, and they were expected to have been more fluent and literate in English, it could be interesting to study the effects of the presence of notes on populations with lower literacy rates and see if there is a greater effect. The perception of preferred note taking styles could also be explored in concurrence with a similar study to observe whether perceived style correlates with higher rates of recall.

Conclusion

The study focused on the effect of paragraphing and note-taking format on memory recall. The results substantiate the significance of the presence of notes and the significant interaction between the presence of notes and use of paragraphing, in relation to textual format.

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge my mentor, Therese Kanaan, as a major contributor to the development of my project.

References

Gasser, M., Haffeman, J. B. M., & Tan, R. (2005). The Influence of Font Type on Information Recall. North American Journal of Psychology. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 237229931_The_Influence_of_Font_Typ e_on_Information_Recall

Larson, K., & Picard, R. (2006). The Aesthetics of Reading. MIT. Retrieved from https://affect.media.mit.edu/pdfs/05.larson -picard.pdf

Ljungdahl, R., & Adler, K. (2018). How Does Text Design Affect Reading Comprehension Of Learning Materials? Malmo University. Retrieved from https://www.divaportal.org/smash/get/diva2:1534909/FUL LTEXT01.pdf

Millis, K. K., Simon, S., & TenBroek, N. S. (1998). Resource allocation during the rereading of scientific texts. Memory & Cognition. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03201136

Santa, C., Abrams, L., & Santa, J. (1979). Effects of Notetaking and Studying on the Retention of Prose. Journal of Reading Behavior. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 238400613_Effects_of_Notetaking_and_ Studying_on_the_Retention_of_Prose

Udomon, I., Xiong, C., Berns, R., Best, K., & Vike, N. (2013). Visual, Audio, and Kinesthetic Effects on Memory Retention and Recall. (n.p.). Retrieved from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Vi sual-%2C-Audio-%2C-and-KinestheticEffects-on-Memory-UdomonXiong/a188aa5808c6511f71ef81129f7c0458f8e42e75