Abstract
Although presenting passages divided with slashes at chunk boundaries, sometimes called 'phrase reading' or 'slash reading,' is a widely used method for raising reading speed in classes, its effect on comprehension is not clear since some studies have shown positive effects but others have not. This may be explained from the aspect of working memory, which concurrently conducts both processing and maintenance. In this study, four types of reading conditions were allotted to 87 Japanese university students. These were: a whole passage, a chunk-cued passage with no pause, a chunk-cued passage with pauses at every chunk, and a chunk-cued passage with pauses at the end of sentences. The current study compared the correlations with memory span for both the non-chunked and chunked conditions. The results showed: (a) in the chunk-cued condition, the load on memory was larger than that of the non-chunked condition, and (b) if pauses were inserted between chunks, the memory load became less.
