Tietz Steffen, Müller Marlene, Rummel Jan, Steindorf Lena
Department of Psychology, Psychology Institute, Heidelberg University, Hauptstraße 47-51, 69 117, Heidelberg, Germany.
TSG ResearchLab, Zuzenhausen, Germany.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 Aug 7. doi: 10.3758/s13423-025-02735-0.
Studies on the relationship between text-processing difficulty, mind wandering, and reading comprehension achieved mixed results. Whereas most studies found mind-wandering frequency to be increased and reading comprehension to be decreased when text processing became more difficult, Faber et al. (Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 24(3), 914-919, 2017) reported an opposite effect when manipulating text difficulty via different font types (i.e., Arial vs. Comic Sans). This effect may reflect a potential of mildly disfluent fonts, such as Comic Sans, to introduce desirable difficulties during reading, thereby enhancing focus on the text. Strongly disfluent fonts, however, may contribute to the commonly observed disadvantages in text focus under conditions of increased text processing difficulty. To test this idea, we conducted a new study (N = 151, student sample) in which we manipulated disfluency in three levels (i.e., fluent, mildly disfluent, strongly disfluent) by using different font types, and compared mind-wandering frequency, reading comprehension, and reading motivation between conditions. The disfluency manipulation affected motivation but not mind wandering or reading comprehension. Additional Bayesian analyses strongly supported the null hypothesis for the latter two. These results suggest that the positive effects of reading disfluency may be less robust than previously assumed and that further research is needed to explore to which extent text-processing difficulty effects on mind wandering are reliant on sample and text characteristics.
关于文本处理难度、思维走神与阅读理解之间关系的研究结果不一。大多数研究发现，当文本处理难度增加时，思维走神频率会上升，阅读理解会下降，但法贝尔等人（《心理onomic通报与评论》24(3)，914 - 919，2017）报告称，通过不同字体类型（即Arial与Comic Sans）来操控文本难度时会产生相反的效果。这种效果可能反映了轻度不流畅字体（如Comic Sans）在阅读过程中引入适度困难的潜力，从而增强对文本的专注度。然而，高度不流畅的字体可能会导致在文本处理难度增加的情况下，出现常见的文本专注度方面的劣势。为了验证这一观点，我们进行了一项新的研究（N = 151，学生样本），在该研究中，我们通过使用不同字体类型将不流畅程度分为三个级别（即流畅、轻度不流畅、高度不流畅），并比较了不同条件下的思维走神频率、阅读理解和阅读动机。不流畅程度的操控影响了动机，但对思维走神或阅读理解没有影响。额外的贝叶斯分析强烈支持了后两者的零假设。这些结果表明，阅读不流畅的积极影响可能不如先前假设的那么稳固，需要进一步研究来探索文本处理难度对思维走神的影响在多大程度上依赖于样本和文本特征。
