19
1. As reported by McCrudden and Schraw (2007), and McCrudden et al. (2010), we
consider that the profile of processing strategies (paraphrases and elaborations) will
be more balanced in AOQ than in SE (Hypothesis 1).
2. AOQ will also encourage more complex cognitive processes as opposed to self-
oriented comprehension by SE (Ozuru et al., 2013), so AOQ students will present
more elaborations than SE students (Hypothesis 2).
3. A
greater

presence

of

elaborations

will

be

related

to

a

greater

learning

of

the
scientific knowledge of the text. The elaborations strategy implies the principle of
construction-integration
(Kintsch,

1998),

that

is,

the

student

will

relate

the

new
information with the prior knowledge stored in the long-term memory (Hypothesis
3).
4. In relation to Hypothesis 3, AOQ students will perform better in the learning test
than SE students, since the elaborations will be more present in question- oriented
comprehension (AOQ) than in self-oriented comprehension through SE (Hypothesis
4).
5. Finally, AOQ will be more efficient in performing the task than SE. AOQ will
spend less time reading the text and responding because AOQ students will have an
explicit demand (Hypothesis 5).
Methodology
Participants
The study included 91 students in the third year of obligatory secondary education
from two public high schools in Valencia, although 14 students were excluded because
they did not have all the tests. Thus, the final sample was 77 students (38 women and 39
men). The mean student age was 14.57 (14.58 in women and 14.56 in men), being the age
range between 14 and 16 years. All participants were native Spanish speakers.
The study design was inter-subject. Participants were randomly assigned to one of
the
two

techniques:

SE

(n

=

42)

and

AOQ

(n

=

35).

There

is

no

difference

in

prior
knowledge in science between SE (M = 19.26; SD = 4.78) and AOQ (M = 19.97; SD = 3.
33), t(75) = 0.74, p = .461.
Materials
Prior Knowledge Test (PKT). This test evaluates general knowledge about science
through 30 True / False items. An example of an item is the following: "The