Effects of headings on text recall and summarization

Two experiments examined how headings influence text recall and summarization. In a free recall task (Experiment 1), the presence of headings facilitated recall of unfamiliar topics but not familiar topics. In a summarization task (Experiment 2), headings and familiarity had independent effects, whereas headings interacted with the amount of discussion of a topic, such that headings had a greater influence on the likelihood that a topic would be included in a summary only when the topic was briefly discussed. Findings are interpreted as indicating that headings and the amount of discussion of a topic jointly influence readers' representation of a text's topic structure and so interact in summarization. Headings and familiarity jointly influence the accessibility of topic information and thus interact in recall, but not summarization,