Headings can influence cognitive processing in three ways: (a) they act as cues that activate readers' prior knowledge relevant to a topic, (b) they emphasize the relationships between concepts and facts in a text, and (c) they serve as retrieval cues that aid subsequent recall of the material.

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In our design each node includes a summary of a text with headings. Incorporating headings in each node is aligned with previous findings on the positive impact of heading on free recall [brooks1983effects]

Headings help comprehension

  Common Characteristics of headings
- headings separate subsections of text
- distinguished from the text by using different typeface and placement
- are always placed before the chunk of text it clarifies
- the relation between headings and the subsections could be strong or weak
- could indicate organization and placement of subsections 
  
  Headings could be
- a single word
- a short phrase of the main topic 
- a question about the theme


Characteristics of Headings

- appear before the content
- distinguished from the text by having different typeface and placement
- often defines the major topic of the text 
- often its “scope” covers the entire text 

Characteristics of a Title

Schneider, S., Beege, M., Nebel, S., & Rey, G. D. (2018). A meta-analysis of how signaling affects learning with media. Educational Research Review, 23, 1-24.

A meta-analysis of how signaling affects learning with media

Signaling or Cueing principle is used to explain the impact of headings on reading comprehension.
- Signaling can be of two type: Textual signaling and Graphical
-Textual signaling can have five subgroups 
 - organizational signals (e.g., headings or summaries), 
 -colors (e.g., font colors), 
- text-picture references (e.g., “see the picture”), 
- intonation (e.g., in auditory texts), 
- a mixture of types (e.g., coloring and text-picture referencing)."

Theories about Headings and reading comprehension

- Both have a facilitative effect on readers’ recall
- Headings and outlines accompanied text resulted in the greatest overall levels of recall
- Outlines promote the recording task better among all conditions
- The explanation for the effect of headings
     - A schema activation process activates content schemata
     - The signaling effect (function as retrieval cues)
- Special explanation for the effect of outlines
     - Knowledge of text organization


The effect of outlines and headings on readers' recall of text

Three sets of operations
- the meaning elements of the text are organized into a coherent whole, a process that results in multiple processing of certain elements resulting in different retention
- condenses the full meaning of the text into its main points
- generates new texts from the results of the comprehension process

A model for text comprehension

Headings influence cognitive processing

- 577 Secondary 6 students
- three performance groups: High, Medium, and Low
- Version 1 was a non-signaled passage
- Version 2 was embedded with logical connectives
- Version 3 titled with paragraph headings
- Version 4 contained both (logical connectives & paragraph headings)
- Version 3, paragraph headings as signals, facilitates both microstructure and microstructure of text understanding.

Signals and reading comprehension - theory and practice

Brooks, L. W., Dansereau, D. F., Spurlin, J. E., & Holley, C. D. (1983). Effects of headings on text processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75(2), 292. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.75.2.292

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