The effects of text-based interest on attention and recall

Attentional demands and recall for stories that differed in rated interest were examined. More interesting stories required fewer attentional resources for comprehension than did less interesting stories (Experiment 1). Overall recall did not differ across story interest, but story interest did interact with type of encoding in terms of recall levels (Experiment 2). Relational encoding improved recall for low-interest stories but not high-interest stories; the reverse pattern was obtained with a manipulation encouraging extensive processing of the individual propositions. We suggest that interesting stories free up resources for relatively optional organizational processing of the text elements, thereby rendering additional relational processing redundant (for recall). Less interesting stories require more resources to keep attention focused on encoding the individual propositions, thereby rendering additional proposition-specific processing redundant.