Gagne, R.M. & Wiegand, V.K. (1970). Effects of a superordinate context on learning and retention of facts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 61, (5), 406-409.

What was/were the research question(s) in the article?

Is the influence of the topic sentence exerted during the learning phase, or does it have its organizing effect during the retrieval phase, or both?

Was the literature review relevant to the research question(s)?

The authors cited works of Ausubel and Rothkopf and Bisbicos. Ausubel stated that the context provided by prior organizers or by previously learned correlative ideas has been shown to affect retention. Rothkopf and Bisbicos found increases in retention in groups of learners who read passages of meaningful material containing questions. Their study found that part of the increase was due to the direct instructive effect of the questions, while a smaller part was shown to be attributable to more general inspection behaviors.

What was the methodology used and was it sound?

44 fourth-grade students were assigned randomly to four subgroups of equal number, and approximately equal by sex. It should be noted that the students IQ scores ranged from 85 to 145 with a median of 113, but this should have no bearing on the study since students were assigned randomly.

The groups are as follows:

SP = superordinate with topic sentence present

SA = superordinate with topic sentence absent

CP = coordinate (related) with topic sentence present

CA = coordinate (related) with topic sentence absent

The students were given five facts to learn and remember about howling monkeys, each being presented in a context with four other facts. Retention was measured in half of each group by presenting the topic sentence immediately before the retention test (SP and CP), and in half without (SA and CA). Two days later the students' retention was measured.

What were the results?

The study found that presenting a superordinate sentence just prior to retention brings about a significant increase in percent remembered by the students.

Were the conclusions consistent with the methodology and results?

The results from this study are consistent with those of a previous investigation by Gagne in 1969. However, there was a discrepancy with age groups. In Gagne's previous study, he found that there was a significant effect of the superordinate sentence when presented during the learning phase for fifth graders, but only a small difference in the fourth graders. Language development is considered a probable factor for the differences in the age groups.

The study emphasizes the use of a topic sentence as an organizer in remembering and indicates that topic sentences improve the remembering of facts when presented before a test.

What interested you most about the article? What questions did it raise?

The study supports the importance of the retrieval phase of the remembering process and suggests that organizing techniques help to facilitate retrieval.

Since this study only allowed two days between the learning phase and retention phase, it would be interesting to see if the results were similar with a longer period between the learning phase and retention test. Also, the study mentions that in a previous study Gagne found a significant effect with fifth graders, but not fourth graders. One might want to conduct this study with the same group in one year and then compare and analyze the results.