Study carried out on whether students will recall of a narrative passage with greater accuracy and consistency than an expository (descriptive) passage.

PSY 309C2 Practical Report

Abstract

University students voluntarily took part in this research project, which involved the reading and recall of narrative and descriptive stories. The main aim of this research was to investigate if students would recall a narrative story with greater accuracy in comparison to a descriptive (expository) story. The students were divided into two groups, they were then read two stories and asked to recall each of them directly after hearing them. The dependent variable in this study was the two stories read to the groups and the independent variable was the order in which the stories were read to each group. The results where collated as part of a class experiment and analysed. They showed that students recalled a narrative passage with greater accuracy than a descriptive (expository) passage.

Introduction

Alan Baddeley (1982, 11) states “Memory is the capacity for storing and retrieving information. Without it we would be unable to see, hear or think.” Memory is a fundamental component of daily life. We rely on it so heavily, that it is not a stretch to say that life without memory would be close to impossible. Baddeley explains that with no memory we as individuals would be vegetables, and classifies this as being intellectually dead. Baddeley (1982, 11) states that individuals do not have a memory but have many memories. Therefore someone who has lost their memory is in fact someone who has a malfunction in one or more of these complex memory systems. Baddeley (1982) explains that had all of these systems been lost the outcome of the person could result in unconsciousness or possible death. Memory is not a single, simple function. As Baddely explains it is an extraordinarily complex system of diverse components and processes. There are at least three, and very likely more, memory processes. The most important and best documented by scientific research are sensory information storage (SIS), short-term memory (STM), and long-term memory (LTM). Each differs with respect to function, the form of information held, the length of time information is retained, and the amount of information-handling capacity.

This study will examine memory, specifically comparing the recall of a narrative and a descriptive passage. There is a long tradition of research into the differences between descriptive and narrative texts. Generally, it has been suggested that descriptive texts are harder to process than narrative texts, perhaps because of the greater variety of relationships among text units, or possibly due to greater variety of content types (Alderson, 2000). The most familiar and most studied (Graesser et al., 1991) text structure is narrative text or stories. “Although there is no prevailing consensus on the definition of narrative text and some debate over the features of a story, narrative text depicts events, actions, emotions, or situations that people in a culture experience” (Graesser et al., 1991). A story is written to excite, inform, or entertain readers (Pearson & Fielding, 1991) and may report actual or fictitious experiences (Graesser et al., 1991). While there are no clear boundaries between categories, narratives include myths, epics, fables, folktales, short stories, novels, tragedy, and comedy. The depictions of events are organized so that the audience can eventually anticipate them (Dennis, 1982). That is, readers must be able to infer motives of characters and the causal relations among events. A large number of empirical studies have demonstrated that narratives typically have a hierarchical structure that readers are sensitive to such structure, and when the structure is used to guide comprehension and recall, both are facilitated (Glenn, 1978; Mandler, 1978; Carroll, 1985). In addition, narrative texts are more likely to induce visualization in the reader as part of the reading process than descriptive texts (Dennis, 1982).

Just as there is no consensus on the definition of narrative text, there is no consensus on how stories are constructed (Graesser et al., 1991). There are various theories about the components, levels, dimensions, and perspectives of narrative text; however each theory falls short of capturing all of the potential intricacies of stories or the ways in which stories involve the reader's emotions (Pearson & Fielding, 1991, p. 821). One theory, story grammar, is the oldest theory of narrative structure and the one most used in research during the last 10 years. Just as there are many theories of narrative text structure, there are many story grammars (Graesser et al., 1991) .

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A story grammar refers to "abstract linguistic representation of the idea, events, and personal motivations that comprise the flow of a story" (Pearson & Fielding, 1991, p. 821). A story grammar captures the important properties of a story and guides comprehension of stories that have "a single main protagonist who encounters a problem-solving situation, a goal that the protagonist attempts to achieve, a plot that unravels how the protagonist attempts to achieve the goal, and an outcome regarding whether the goal was achieved" (Graesser et al., 1991, p. 179). Further, story grammars specify the major components of a story (Graesser et al., 1991); hierarchical relations between story grammar components; and rules that govern what information is included or deleted within the story, order of information, relations between story components, and embedding of episodes within story components such as the beginning, outcome, or ending. More complex stories normally have multiple episodes and follow rules that allow changes and deletions of story grammar components (Graesser et al., 1991).

The assumption behind story grammar theory is that story grammar components and their hierarchical relations represent frames or patterns that readers can use to store information in long-term memory. Pearson and Fielding (1991) cited five references that support the validity of story grammars as models of comprehension by providing evidence that adults' and children's story retellings matched the sequential order of story grammar components and that the frequency of recalled information correlated with the hierarchical position of the information in the story grammar framework. Story grammars generate predictions about patterns of passage recall, passage summarization, importance ratings of statement, passage statement clusters, and reading time, but there has been controversy over whether story grammars or other representations of knowledge (e.g., knowledge about planning, social action, and motives) can explain these predictions (Graesser et al., 1991). Despite these controversies, Graesser et al. (1991) concluded that story grammars unite dozens of empirical trends into one theory of story construction.

While narrative text structure primarily entertains, expository (descriptive) text primarily communicates information (Weaver & Kintsch, 1991). Textbooks, essays, and most magazine articles are examples of expository text (Pearson & Fielding, 1991). While narrative text structures have largely focused on story grammars, research on expository text has spanned a much broader range of organizational patterns. Common expository text structures include compare/contrast, classification, illustration, procedural description (Weaver & Kintsch, 1991), sequence, enumeration or collection, problem-solution, and description (Meyer & Rice, 1984). Each type of expository text structure is represented by an organizational pattern that includes differing types of relations between important information in the text. Kintsch (cited in Weaver & Kintsch, 1991) described three types of relationships between ideas in expository text: general-to-particular, as in identification, definition, classification, or illustration; object-to-object, as in comparison/contrast; and object-to-part, as in structural analysis to tell how to put something together, functional analysis to tell how something works, or causal analysis to tell a cause or consequence.

Research evidence suggests that well-structured expository text facilitates comprehension of main ideas or topics, rather than facts. For example, Kintsch and Yarbrough (cited in Weaver & Kintsch, 1991) found that students who read well-structured essays that showed clear relations between ideas, performed better on a measure of global comprehension (macroprocesses; e.g., topic and main-point questions) than did students who read essays on the same content in which the order of paragraphs did not follow principles of organization and in which cues to text structure were deleted. Performance was equal on a measure of local comprehension (microprocesses), measured using cloze procedures (i.e., a measure in which students fill in the missing words deleted from a passage they have read).

Narrative and descriptive texts have been found to have differential effects upon readers, with narrative appearing easier to comprehend and monitor than expository text. Zabrucky and Ratner (1992) examined the effects of eight narrative and eight expository passages on the comprehension monitoring and recall of 16 good and 16 poor sixth-grade readers. Some passages contained a sentence that was inconsistent with the rest of the passage, while other passages did not. Text was presented on a computer screen, one sentence at a time. Reading times and students' verbal reports were used to examine students' evaluation of their comprehension and look-backs to inconsistencies during reading.

For both good and poor readers, text type affected recall and comprehension monitoring. Students recalled significantly more idea units from narrative than expository passages. When comparing texts with inconsistencies to texts without inconsistencies, students looked back more frequently for inconsistent narrative than inconsistent expository text, suggesting that inconsistencies were more apparent in narrative than in expository text. Students were also better able to verbally report on passage consistency after reading narrative than expository passages. Students reread expository passages more frequently than narrative passages when the passages did not contain inconsistent information, indicating that students found expository text more problematic than narrative text. Additionally, students reread more frequently when inconsistent text was adjacent to the correct sentence than when it was far from the correct sentence.

Taking into account previous research on recalling narrative and descriptive passages the following hypothesis was constructed: -

An individual will recall a narrative passage with more accuracy and consistency compared to recalling a descriptive (expository) passage of the same length.

Method

Design:

The means by which this research was carried out was in the form of an experiment. The practical was conducted with two groups of students, one of the groups was under normal conditions and the other group had their eyes closed. Each group had the same two stories read to them, one narrative story and the other a descriptive (expository) story. There were two variables, the dependant variable and the independent variable. In this particular study the dependant variable was the two stories read out and the independent variable was which order the stories were read to each group.

Subjects:

The participants of this project were students in their second year of a Social Psychology degree at the University of Ulster, Coleraine campus. The total of 58 students were divided into two groups, the first group had 26 participants and the second group had 32 participants. It is important to note that these participants had no prior knowledge of the two stories, and therefore there was no deliberate attempt to memorise any story. The participants’ race, gender, age, nationality and religion were not necessary for this study

Materials:

For this research project few materials were required – the appropriate stories to read aloud to each group i.e. story 1A and 3A and to record the story a pen and paper were needed per person.

Procedure:

The research project was carried out in one a lecture room in the University of Ulster, Coleraine. The participants were divided into two groups. Group one which consisted of 26 participants who were under normal conditions were read the passages in the order of 1A then 3B. Group two which had 32 participants, were read the passages in order of 3B then 1A with their eyes closed. The procedure for recalling each passage happened directly after each story was dictated i.e. story 1A was read to the group, then the participants had to recall what they remembered on a sheet of paper. After the narrative and descriptive passages were read and recalled on paper they were marked by swapping scripts with another student. The scripts (stories recalled by students) were awarded marks for recall of clauses and words.

Results

Table 1 Shows Independent Sample t-test

The results in Table 1 show t-test values on the words and clauses recalled. There is a notable significance when passage 3B is read first.

Table 2 shows the mean scores

Table 2 shows the mean scores of words and clauses recalled by the participants in each passage. It is clear to see that when passage 1A was read first the highest numbers of words were recorded whereas when passage 3B was read first the participants recorded the least amount of words. The highest number of clauses recalled by the participants was when passage 1A was read second. It is interesting to note that lowest amount of clauses recalled when 3B again was read first.

Discussion

After considering numerous research accounts on the variance in recalling stories and texts, a report was conducted hypothesising that an individual will recall a narrative passage with more accuracy and consistency compared to recalling a descriptive (expository) passage of the same length. The results that were collected by the class supported the original hypothesis; a narrative passage is recalled with greater accuracy compared to a descriptive passage. A significant relationship was detected between the two variables

Previous research indicates that in order to have an accurate recollection of a story or text passage the following factors are imperative. Alderson, (2000) explains there is the interest or intent as to whether or not the individual was listening to a story with the personal interest or intent of remembering and reproducing that narrative or story. “Memory recall depends heavily upon the desire and intent of the individual to remember and retell the story.” (Alderson, 2000).

As a larger story builds, there is the tendency for more and more oral hearers to develop enough interest to get hooked on the building story, after which they begin recalling and retelling the stories with greater accuracy (Walter Ong, 1982). Ong, (1982) describes that in essence, most oral individuals have to “get hooked on the story or stories” to the point that they are almost one with the story for accurate recall and retelling to occur. Walter Ong (1982) cites that one major characteristic of oral communicators is that they listen so intently that in their mind they join the story. After developing an interest in the story and after hearing the story enough times, just the thought of the story brings about the “playing of the story in the mind." (Walter Ong, 1982). It is like turning the story on in their mind like literates would view a video. They see the story occur in their mind and tell what they are seeing, which results in high accuracy.

The accurate recall of a story may rely upon a trigger of some kind to call to their memory the appropriate story, which then plays in their mind like a video, which allows them to accurately retell the story they are seeing in their mind (Pearson & Fielding, 1991). Some have used pictures of individual stories to trigger the memory. Some have used key words or symbols. Pearson & Feilding (1991) also stress that mxcaintaining the chronology is critical for recall and retelling.

“By identifying a theme or topic with the story is also very important in achieving maximum recall” (Glenn, 1978). Glenn, C. (1978) describes how this is accomplished during the pre-story introduction, during the telling and during the dialog that follows the story. As each story is identified for it is important to have a key word or phrase that goes with the story). It must be clearly seen as identifying with the story by the listener. (Glenn, C. 1978)

There is the cultural style of stories as they are told within a specific culture. Numerous researchers such as Klem, Goody, and Finnegan have observed that each culture tells stories in very characteristic ways. (E. Havelock, 1986 page 11.) In West Africa it is common for a culture to tell part of the story, sing another part and use the drum to tell another part of the story. (Havelock, 1986 pp. 12-13) Certain storytelling phrases are common in other cultures. Ultimate success is usually dependent upon “telling the story the way they tell stories.” (Havelock, 1986 pp. 12-13)

Lastly, memory is affected by the form or style of the information that has been told and heard (Weaver & Kintsch, 1991). If the information has come in a familiar, narrative, story format, the attitude and ability of that person is enhanced and thus is regularly observed to be much higher than it is when what was told and heard came in an non-narrative, style or format. That is because it is much easier for any individual to remember narratives or stories than expositionally formatted and presented information. Weaver & Kintsch, (1991), theory supports the findings of this report, that the passage 3B is the exposition (descriptive) text and therefore is recalled with less accuracy and consistency.

We cannot draw any concrete conclusions from this though, because it is only an assumption based on one groups findings. It is also important to note that some methodological shortcomings of the present study may have had an impact on the results. It is possible that when the participants were carrying out the experiment that there were other distractions in the room which may have hindered them in the recollection of the stories. Also the participants may have felt some pressure to perform well, and hence was nervous and unable to remember as much of the stories as they thought they were capable of. These two factors could be controlled in future similar experiments by ensuring that the experiment is carried out in a room were there are no other distractions and the participant therefore feels at ease with the task involved.

The overall conclusion that I am able to draw from this study is that a narrative passage can be recalled with greater accuracy than a descriptive passage. The individual participant’s ability to recall a story also has a major influence on the outcome of the experiment. With more research more definite conclusions can be made.

References

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Graesser, A., Golding, J. M., & Long, D. L. (1991). Narrative representation and comprehension. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 171-204). White Plains, NY: Longman.

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Weaver, C. A., III, & Kintsch, W. (1991). Expository text. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 230-244). White Plains, NY: Longman.

Zabrucky, K., & Ratner, H. H. (1992). Effects of passage type on comprehension monitoring and recall in good and poor readers. Journal of Reading Behavior, 24 , 373-391).

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