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Do highlights affect comprehension? Lessons from a user study

  • University of British Columbia

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

A largely unquestioned assumption in social reading is that publicly shared annotations improve reading outcomes. In this study, we explore the specific assumption that relevant and irrelevant passive highlighting affects comprehension. Participants were divided by cognitive style based on their degree of Field Dependence-Independence [20]. We found that irrelevant highlights had significant negative effects on reading comprehension for Field Independents (FIs), but not Field Dependents (FDs). This is a surprising result because FDs typically rely on external cues to structure and help process information, whereas FIs use internal cues. This suggests that highlighting cues information but does not structure it. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCHIIR 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 Conference Human Information Interaction and Retrieval
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages381-384
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450346771
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 7 2017
Event2nd ACM SIGIR Conference on Information Interaction and Retrieval, CHIIR 2017 - Oslo, Norway
Duration: Mar 7 2017Mar 11 2017

Publication series

NameCHIIR 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 Conference Human Information Interaction and Retrieval

Conference

Conference2nd ACM SIGIR Conference on Information Interaction and Retrieval, CHIIR 2017
Country/TerritoryNorway
CityOslo
Period03/7/1703/11/17

Keywords

  • Annotation
  • Comprehension
  • Highlighting
  • Reading
  • Social reading

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