Use of Cognitive Capacity in Reading Easy and Difficult Text: Two Tests of an Allocation of Attention Hypothesis

Abstract

Use of cognitive capacity in reading easy and difficult text was observed with a secondary task technique in 2 experiments. Previous experiments had shown that easy text filled cognitive capacity more completely than difficult text. One hypothesis for this effect is that attention was allocated differentially to easy passages at the expense of difficult ones. Contrary to this hypothesis, in both of the present experiments, content tests showed that a large amount of detailed information was learned from both easy and difficult texts. When the memory load was reduced to reduce the motivation for differential allocation of attention, easy texts continued to fill cognitive capacity more completely than difficult texts. These results were not consistent with an allocation of attention hypothesis. Other hypotheses were considered.