- If the text contains no signals that facilitate organization of the text, readers would process the text in a linear format like a list of ideas.
- When being asked to recall the information, they would search the information serially and recalling one idea would trigger the recall of the next idea in their imagined list.

Linear Strategy

- readers would organize the information hierarchically based on a set of related subtopics. 
- Readers would recall the information in a  top-down way like how they process the information hierarchically  

Structure Strategy 

- Strategy Selection Hypothesis 
- Strategy Implementation Hypothesis

Two hypotheses on how headings would affect readers’ selection of a text processing strategy 

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

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

Experiments suggesting that headings would result in a better recall of expository text 

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. 

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