Contributions of self-explanation to comprehension of high- and low-cohesion texts

This study examined how the contribution of self-explanation to science text comprehension is affected by the cohesion of a text at a local level. Psychology undergraduates read and self-explained a science text with either low or high local cohesion. Local cohesion was manipulated by the presence or absence of connectives and referential words or phrases that explicitly link successive sentences. After the self-explanation activity, participants answered open-ended comprehension questions about the text. Participants in the high local cohesion condition produced higher quality explanations, including more local bridging.