17
Introduction
1
In general, students in obligatory secondary education are accustomed to reading
expository texts in order to respond to a given task (e.g., underlining, summarizing, self-
explaining, answering questions). Text processing and learning depends on the purpose
of reading, which influences students’ attention, recall, and understanding (McCrudden
&
Schraw,

2007;

McCrudden,

Magliano,

&

Schraw,

2011;

van

den

Broek,

Lorch,
Linderholm, & Gustafson, 2001; Wilson & Sperber, 2004). This approach is known as
task-oriented-reading (OECD, 2009; Snow, 2002; Vidal-Abarca, Mañá, & Gil, 2010).
Tasks performed during reading can become important techniques of autonomous
learning from texts. However, students are not aware of their efficacy and they have not
been trained for their performance (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham,
2013). For this reason, the present study analyzes the efficacy of self- explanations (SE)
and
answering

open-ended

questions

(AOQ)

as

techniques

for

learning

complex
declarative knowledge (e.g., scientific knowledge), which is characterized by its level of
abstraction. Both techniques imply the performance of tasks with the available text, so
that, the reading
is

not linear (Cerdán, Vidal-Abarca, Martínez, Gilabert, & Gil, 2009;
Chi, De Leeuw, Chiu, & Lavancher, 1994).
SE is understood as an inferential and construction activity of one's own learning
(Chi et al., 1994; Best, Ozuru, & McNamara, 2004; Ozuru, Briner, Best, & McNamara,
2010), that is, they are explanations of textual information generated by the student and
for the
student

while

he

is

reading

(McNamara,

2004;

McNamara

&

Magliano,

2009;
Rittle-Johnson,
2006).

The

responsibility

for

learning

lies

with

the

reader

himself.

He
guides his understanding and
makes the appropriate inferences until a coherent mental
representation is reached (McNamara, 2004). Many studies have found that readers who
make good SE build more accurate mental models; however, other studies using science
expository texts have shown that it is more effective to request the use of SE (Chi et al.,
1994; Rittle-Johnson & Loehr, 2016; Schworm & Renkl, 2007).
Although SE can promote high-level processing strategies, such as elaborations
(integration of new
information with prior knowledge), recent studies

have considered
that the usefulness of SE is moderate (Dunlosky et al., 2013). The understanding reached
with this technique
is global (McCrudden & Schraw, 2007) and is not effective for all
types of materials (Rittle-Johnson & Loehr, 2016; Williams, Lombrozo, & Rehder, 2013).
Likewise,
students

have

serious

difficulties

in

generating

SE,

so

instead

of

making
elaborations, they focus on superficial comprehension strategies
(repetition
1
Research supported by Project EDU2017-86650-R and financed by the Ministry of Science, Innovation
and Universities.