How Text Length Moderates the Effectiveness of Stop-and-Jot Strategy on Reading Comprehension
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Psychology and Special Education
Date of Award
Spring 2025
Abstract
Self-regulated learning strategies (sometimes called metacognitive strategies) are practices used by students to enhance learning. The effectiveness of these practices has been widely researched, establishing robust strategies, such as retrieval, and less effective strategies, such as highlighting or rereading (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Students and teachers alike are often unaware of the current research, however, and may use strategies ineffectively. A common reading comprehension strategy being taught even in early elementary school is a generative chunking strategy colloquially dubbed stop and jot (SAJ). It involves stopping after each paragraph and “jotting” a summarizing phrase in the margin. The purpose is threefold: to improve attention while reading, to improve comprehension, and to create notes that may be referred to later. The empirical evidence for whether these purposes are achieved by SAJ is somewhat lacking. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of SAJ on reading comprehension in texts of different lengths. Undergraduate university students were assigned to either a SAJ group (short or long passage) or the No-Writing (NW) control group (short or long passage). The SAJ groups received basic instructions to use the SAJ strategy while reading. A general comprehension measure was taken for each group to establish baseline comprehension a priori. Additionally, participants rated their familiarity with the passage content post hoc. It was hypothesized that groups would perform similarly for short passages due to less need for long term memory storage; however, no significant effect of passage length was found. It was further hypothesized that the SAJ Long group would perform higher in comprehension as compared to the Control Long group due to strategy use. However, no significant effect of strategy use was found. These findings support the claim that summarization is a low-utility strategy that may only be useful in specific contexts (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
Advisor
Lacy Krueger
Subject Categories
Education | Educational Psychology
Recommended Citation
Talley, Stephanie, "How Text Length Moderates the Effectiveness of Stop-and-Jot Strategy on Reading Comprehension" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 1272.
https://digitalcommons.tamuc.edu/etd/1272
