The nonsignificant difference in the total number of propositions made by the comprehensive and the no map groups indicates that the comprehensive map was a saturated representation of the text, and that it was easy to memorise the content of a short text as used in this experiment.

The representations from the no map group were more verbatim memory oriented and less structurally organised than those from the comprehensive map group.

The fact that both map groups outperformed the no map group on the gist comprehension questions indicates that having a map helped the participants to identify the relationships and to fill in the missing links between concepts.

When synthesising texts, the readers need to concentrate on the most crucial arguments in the texts, and so, too many details may increase the effort needed to sift through the materials for the needed information.

Therefore, the concept maps that focus on the themes may work better than those that strive for comprehensive representations when arguments are supported by complex or overly informative details.