Effect of Text Cohesion on Comprehension of Biology Texts

This study explored the effect of text cohesion on reading comprehension of challenging science texts among students with little topic-relevant knowledge. Introductory level psychology students, considered to have a low level of knowledge on the topic, read high and low cohesion versions of biology texts. After reading the texts, their comprehension of the texts was assessed with text-based or inference-based open-ended comprehension questions. The results showed that participants benefited from high cohesion texts. The benefit was observed only for text-based questions, and the positive effect was marginally larger for skilled compared to unskilled readers. This study provides a better understanding of how text cohesion affects one’s comprehension of science texts.