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The acquisition of document search strategies in grade school students
Author(s) -
Rouet JeanFrançois,
Coutelet Béatrice
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.1415
Subject(s) - psychology , task (project management) , comprehension , index (typography) , table (database) , visual search , function (biology) , cognition , information retrieval , mathematics education , cognitive psychology , computer science , world wide web , data mining , management , evolutionary biology , economics , programming language , neuroscience , biology
Skilled comprehension includes the ability to search complex documents in order to retrieve and make use of information of interest. Two studies investigated the acquisition of document search skills by 9‐ to 13‐year‐old students. Experiment 1 explored third, fifth and seventh grade students' book search strategies as a function of question complexity. There was a sharp decrease across grades in time on task and need for experimenter assistance. Older students' search strategies evolved from mere flipping through the pages to top‐down search based on the use of structural organizers, for example the table of contents and index. Experiment 2 replicated the effects of grade on text search strategies using a more controlled setting. Older students were significantly faster at searching longer texts, and they used more top‐down strategies based on the use of text organizers. We discuss the contribution of metatextual knowledge and self‐regulation in expert text processing strategies. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.