How organizational signals, need for cognition, and verbal ability affect text recall and recognition

This study investigated the effects of organizational signals, need for cognition, and verbal ability on recall and recognition of information from an expository text. Ninety-two undergraduate students completed the Need for Cognition scale (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984) and read a text that either: (a) contained organizational signals in the form of an overview, headings, and a summary or (b) contained no signals. Consistent with our primary hypothesis, there was a marginal tendency for organizational signals to interact with need for cognition to influence conditional recall of expository text information. Specifically, need for cognition was related marginally to conditional recall only in the "no signals" condition. Organizational signals, need for cognition, and verbal ability contributed significantly to prediction of performance on three measures of text recall. By contrast, performance on the recognition test was influenced by an interaction between organizational signals and verbal ability. Implications of the findings are discussed, (C) 2000 Academic Press.