Faber Myrthe, Mills Caitlin, Kopp Kristopher, D'Mello Sidney
Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, 224 Haggar Hall, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA.
Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, Psychology-Computer Science Building, DeKalb, IL, 60115, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2017 Jun;24(3):914-919. doi: 10.3758/s13423-016-1153-z.
When reading, we frequently find ourselves thinking about something other than the text. These attentional lapses, known as mind wandering (MW), are negatively correlated with text comprehension. Previous studies have shown that more syntactically and semantically difficult texts elicit more MW, because textual difficulty impedes the construction of a mental model of the text, which makes it more difficult to suppress off-task thoughts. But is it possible to reduce MW without altering the content of the text itself? We hypothesized that reading a perceptually disfluent text might require more attentional resources, even if the content remained the same, leaving fewer resources available for MW. To test this idea, we manipulated the typefaces (fluent [Arial] or disfluent [ ]) of two instructional texts on scientific research methods (each about 1,490 words long), and found that MW was less frequent when participants read the disfluent text. There were no comprehension differences between the fluent and disfluent groups. However, we did find an indirect effect of disfluency on comprehension through MW, suggesting that disfluency influences comprehension by enhancing attention. These findings provide insights into how processing difficulty and attention interact during reading comprehension.
阅读时，我们常常发现自己在思考文本之外的事情。这些注意力的分散，即所谓的思维游走（MW），与文本理解呈负相关。先前的研究表明，句法和语义上更难的文本会引发更多的思维游走，因为文本难度阻碍了对文本心理模型的构建，这使得抑制无关任务的想法变得更加困难。但是，有没有可能在不改变文本内容本身的情况下减少思维游走呢？我们假设，阅读感知上不流畅的文本可能需要更多的注意力资源，即使内容保持不变，可供思维游走的资源也会减少。为了验证这一想法，我们对两篇关于科学研究方法的教学文本（每篇约1490个单词）的字体（流畅的[Arial]或不流畅的[ ]）进行了操控，发现参与者阅读不流畅文本时思维游走的频率较低。流畅组和不流畅组在理解方面没有差异。然而，我们确实发现不流畅性通过思维游走对理解产生了间接影响，这表明不流畅性通过增强注意力来影响理解。这些发现为阅读理解过程中加工难度和注意力如何相互作用提供了见解。
