Differences between experts and novices when reading with navigational table of contents
| Pages | 194-210 |
| Published date | 18 June 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-05-2017-0100 |
| Date | 18 June 2018 |
| Author | Quan Lu,Jiyue Zhang,Jing Chen,Ji Li |
Differences between experts and
novices when reading with
navigational table of contents
Quan Lu and Jiyue Zhang
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Jing Chen
School of Information Management,
Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China, and
Ji Li
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine the difference between experts and novices when reading
with navigational table of contents (N-TOC). Experts refer to readers with high level of domain knowledge;
novices refer to readers with low level of domain knowledge.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors performed a controlled experiment of three reading tasks
(includingfact finding task, partial understanding task, and full-text understandingtask) on an N-TOC system
for 35 post-graduates of Wuhan University who have rich experience in reading with N-TOC. Participants’
domain knowledgewas measured by pre-experimentquestionnaires;reading performance data includingscore,
time, navigationuse, and evaluation of N-TOC were collected.
Findings –The results showed that there was significant difference in neither navigation use nor
participants’evaluation, but domain experts performed significantly better in both score and time of all tasks
than domain novices, which revealed an “illusion of control”phenomenon that rich experience in reading with
N-TOC enabled domain novices to achieve the same performance as domain experts. In addition, this research
found that N-TOC was not suitable for domain novices to solve full-text understanding task because of
“cognitive overload”phenomenon.
Originality/value –This study makes a good contribution to the literature on the effect of domain
knowledge on reading performance during N-TOC reading and how to provide better digital reading service
in the field of library science and information science.
Keywords Performance, Reading, Difference, Domain knowledge, Experience, N-TOC
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
With the popularity of computer, digital reading, which refers to reading materials are
electronic and not printed, has been a common practice for people. Unfortunately,
disorientation hampering reading performance may take place in digital reading (Amadieu
et al., 2010), and in response to this, a number of navigational aids have been developed.
Navigational table of contents (N-TOC) is the automatic table of contents, which generates a
site map that points to various parts of the document, thus providing a quick way to jump to
the desired section. In fact, N-TOC is one of the most broadly used navigational aids, usually
embedded in e-reader applications, such as Adobe Digital Editions and Foxit Reader, so it is
a commonplace for people to read with N-TOC. N-TOC is also essentially a kind of text
signal, the writing device that emphasizes aspects of a text content or structure without
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 36 No. 2, 2018
pp. 194-210
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/LHT-05-2017-0100
Received 31 May 2017
Revised 13 October 2017
Accepted 20 November 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support by National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Nos 61772375 and 71420107026), the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and
Social Sciences at Universities (No. 17JJD870002) and Higher Education Reform Research Project of
Hubei Province (No. 2016078).
194
LHT
36,2
adding to the content of the text (Lorch, 1989). Research shows that text signal can facilitate
reading like helping navigate and browse between and within documents (Agosti and Ferro,
2007), enhancing document organization (Šimko et al., 2011), and improving reader’s reading
comprehension (Nokelainen et al., 2005; Porter-O’Donnell, 2004) as well as recall of textual
information (Loman and Mayer, 1983).
Prior knowledge is one important factor when considering reading performance (Coiro, 2011;
Kendeou and van den Broek, 2007). System experience, one component of prior knowledge,
refers to reader’s knowledge of the system being used (Lazonder, 2000). Another component is
domain knowledge referring to reader’s understanding of the content area (Lazonder, 2000).
Due to the widespread use of N-TOC, readers who frequently use e-reader applications would
have similarly rich system experience. In previous studies, domain knowledge has been
demonstrated to affect the usage of navigation aids during reading (McDonald and Stevenson,
1998) and reading performance (Ozuru et al., 2009). Researchers also found that readers with
high domain knowledge performed better than readers with low domain knowledge when
reading with the text signal, such as headings (Surber and Schroeder, 2007) and overview
(Amadieu et al., 2010). However, can domain novice readers achieve the same performance as
domain expert readers by using N-TOC when they have similarly rich system experience,
especially in post-secondary education, is still unclear. Therefore, this study attempts to examine
whether they can and what are the differences, which is of important value for improving
reading policy, reading strategies as well as digital reading tools.
In order to discover the differences, a controlled experiment was conducted in this study.
According to their domain knowledge, participants were divided into two groups: expert
group and novice group. All participants were asked to finish three reading tasks in a
document auxiliary reading system which supports reading the document with N-TOC
(called N-TOC system) and two questionnaires. Their performance, measured by score, time
navigation use, and evaluation of N-TOC were recorded. Then a quantitative and qualitative
analysis was made to gain insight into the performance difference between the two groups.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews related work and detailed
method is presented in Section 3. Then, results are presented in Section 4 and discussion is
given in Section 5. Finally, in Section 6, the summary of the findings is concluded.
2. Related work
2.1 Headings and reading
Text signal has been regarded as a helpful and straightforward navigational aid to help
reading (Lorch and Lorch, 1995; Lorch et al., 1993; Nokelainen et al., 2005) and it varies
in type. N-TOC is among the most broadly used text signal which includes headings and
subheadings, and usually embedded in e-reader applications. Although studies on N-TOC
related to reading are rare, much research has been done on headings related to reading.
Headings act as a guide during reading,by revealing an accurate and complete text topic
structure to the reader (Lorch, 1989; Lorch and Lorch, 1995). And the function of guide has
been proved to support the navigation and browsing between and within documents
(Agosti and Ferro, 2007), increase reader’s attention (Hyönä and Lorch, 2004; Lorch et al.,
2013), help the integration of information (Lorch, 1993; Surber and Schroeder, 2007), and
ultimately result in the enhancement of reading (Surber and Schroeder, 2007).
This enhancement mostly appears in text recall, as well as in text comprehension. When
examining the effect of headings on text recall, researchers found that due to the good
representation of topic structure, headings did play an important and positive role
(Loman and Mayer, 1983;Kardash and Noel, 2000; Meyer andPoon, 2001; Ritchey et al., 2008;
Lorch et al., 2013).For instance, Loman and Mayer (1983)compared the recall performance of
high school student in two conditions: no-headings and with-headings condition, and found
that the information in with-headings condition was generally remembered better than in
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Differences
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experts and
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