Sanchez, Rebecca Polley ; Lorch, Elizabeth Pugzles ; Lorch, Robert F. (n.d.). Effects of Headings on Text Processing Strategies. Contemporary educational psychology. San Diego, CA: Elsevier Inc.

Effects of Headings on Text Processing Strategies

Text processing strategies 

Lorch, R. F., Lorch, E. P., &amp; Inman, W. E. (1993). Effects of signaling topic structure on text recall. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(2), 281–290. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.85.2.281 

Effects of Signaling Topic Structure on Text Recall

One of the researchers Meyer has conducted several experiments on investigating whether headings would improve people recalling the information, and the results showed that headings would not improve people recalling information. 

Previous Experiments have failed in supporting the beneficial effects of headings on overall recall

- Dee-Lucas & DiVesta, 1980; 
- Loman & Mayer, 1983; 
- Lorch & Lorch, 1985, 1995, 1996a, 1996b; 
- Lorch, Lorch, & Inman, 1993; 
- Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, 1980; 
- Meyer & Rice, 1982

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Headings, by providing the organization of subsections, could connect different topics together to improve comprehension and free recall

Headings can improve readers’ memory of the text

 - The most direct experiment to test effects of headings on free recall would be giving the participants free recall tasks on the overall text
- This is because when asking participants to free recall, it would require them to search their memories systematically so that we could examine the effects of headings on organization of information directly

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