Designing Instructional Text for Older Readers--论文代写范文精选

研究文献适合老龄化，是否影响老年人的学习和记忆。科尔曼区分三个重叠的领域:生理、认知和社会。生理研究考察老化的生理现象。例如,大多数人随着年龄增加，视力急剧下降。认知老化的研究侧重于改变记忆,学习和判断。下面这篇essay代写范文将进行详述。

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of whether or not we need to design text differently for older readers. Research with relatively simple text indicates that there is little firm evidence to suggest that making design changes for older readers (except for increasing type-sizes) facilitates their performance. However, research with more complex text settings suggests that changes made to facilitate the understanding of complex text appear to hinder older readers. These findings suggest that older readers should be asked to play a part in the user-testing stage of the development of instructional text.

Life expectancy at birth in the UK has increased by 50% in this century and 4 in every 10 British adults are now over 50. In the United States currently 12% of the population is 65 years of age or older and the number of Americans over the age of 65 years is expected to double to 65 million by 2030. Thus people are living longer and the number of elderly people in the community is getting larger. Consequently there are more older people reading the texts that are currently available, and more texts are being produced especially for older readers.

The research literature on the effects of ageing on learning and memory is voluminous. Following Bond, Coleman and Peace (1993) we can distinguish between three overlapping areas: physiological, cognitive, and social. Physiological research looks at the biology of ageing and its physiological correlates. Most people, for example, experience with age a sharp decline in eyesight. Cognitive research on ageing focuses on changes in memory, learning and judgement. Such effects have implications for work on text design. Social research on ageing examines how, for example, societies expect their older members to function. Studies of ´ageism', for instance, focus on how commonly held attitudes and beliefs about what old people should and should not do determine to a considerable extent what, in fact, they do do.

It is difficult to summarise in a few lines the main findings of these multi-faceted studies of ageing and their implications for text design. The picture is complex, and research in the field is expanding rapidly. Nonetheless, there are two main points that is helpful to bear in mind when thinking about text design for older readers. These are:

1. Working memory capacity (i.e. information held and used in ongoing tasks) declines as people get older.
2. The more difficult the task and the older the person, the more disproportionately difficult that task becomes.

Thus, for example, older people might recall text relatively well but find summarising it disproportionately difficult compared to younger adults (Byrd, 1985).

Meyer, Young and Bartlett (1989) suggest that it is important to consider three overlapping variables in studies of older people learning from text. These are:

Thus one might not expect differences between older and younger readers when the verbal ability of the readers is high, when they have good prior knowledge, when the texts are well presented, and when the tasks are relatively straightforward. Differences, however, might well be expected to emerge with less-able readers, less familiar materials, poorly designed text and more complex tasks.

Improving typographically simple layouts

Generally speaking, the studies on the effects of ageing outlined above suggest that text will be easier for older people to use if their perceptual and memory processing loads are reduced. I would want to suggest that this can be achieved by, for example:

In this first section of this paper I shall outline some of the results from studies specifically carried out with older users in these respects. These studies have mainly used what I call typographically simple text - that is, continuous expository prose. I shall discuss studies with typographically complex text in the next section.

Large print

There are undoubtedly many situations in which text is printed in too small a type-size for the elderly or visually impaired reader: one only has to think of the small print in holiday booking forms, financial agreements, prescription labels, etc. Yet despite this well known fact I have been unable to trace many studies of type-size with older readers.

Type-sizes are traditionally measured in points, of which there are 72 to an inch.

Generally speaking type-sizes of less than 8 point are too small to be read easily, and type-sizes of 10-12 point are normally used in academic text of the kind you are reading now. (This text was set in 10 in 12 point in the printed version) Larger type-sizes are used for headings, titles, and display purposes.

Two studies were conducted by Poulton in the 1960s with very small type-sizes, using housewives as participants. These housewives ranged in age from their twenties to their seventies but Poulton did not report the results for different age groupings. However, he did report that the participants found lists of ingredients on food labels were easier to read in 6 point than 4 point type, and that newsprint in 9 point was scanned seven per cent. faster than newsprint in 8 point.

Type-faces also come traditionally in two main kinds - with or without serifs. Serifs are the small finishing strokes at the ends of the letters. Faces without these finishing strokes are called sans serif faces. The following text illustrates the difference:

Noble ways sing other bread. Long stores perform second teeth. Religious fashions compose wide factories. Excellent officials appear usual towns. Sorry coals walk five defences. Numerous flowers speak wrongly.

set in two type-faces (Gill sans serif and Plantin), two weights (medium and bold) and in different pairs of type-sizes according to the participant's visual acuity (e.g. 12 and 14 point, 14 and 16 point, etc.). The participants in her study were 288 visually handicapped adults of varying ages. Shaw did not report specific comparisons between her older and younger participants, but she did make occasional comments in this respect.

Shaw found that an increase in type-size achieved a 16% improvement in reading performance, an increase in weight 9%, and a change from Plantin (a serif face) to Gill sans (a sans serif face) a 4% improvement. Shaw reported that this type-face change was particularly helpful for participants over 50 years of age.

In another study carried out in the 1960s, Prince (1967) compared short texts (210 words long) printed in both 14 on 18 point and 18 on 23 point. The participants were various groups of older readers over 60 years old and a number of visually handicapped children. Prince concluded that the larger type-sizes helped ´a great number of readers'.

Vanderplas and Vanderplas (1980) compared several type-faces in 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 point settings with proportional line lengths and spacing. The participants were aged between 60 and 83 years of age. The results suggested that more text was read per unit time as the type-sizes increased, but there were interactions between different sizes and different type-faces. In one experiment, where 12 and 14 point type-sizes, line-length, and interline-spacing were all systematically varied, the 14 point type was read more rapidly than 12 point when the inter-line space was 2 or 3 points, but not when the spacing was 4 points. Vanderplas and Vanderplas recommend (with numerous caveats) that 12 or 14 point type-size is suitable for older readers.

This suggestion is in line with many guidelines offered by practitioners. The British Royal National Institute for the Blind (the RNIB), for instance, recommends the use of 14 point type for partially sighted readers (and, incidentally, the use of 12 point for sighted readers, since many still have difficulty with small print). The RNIB also suggests the use of a sans serif type-face for small blocks of instructional text. Table 1 lists some guidelines suggested by the RNIB in this respect.

Table 1: Recommendations when designing text for the visually impaired. (Guidelines adapted, and occasionally slightly modified, from the RNIB´s See it Right: Clear Print Guidelines. Reproduced with permission of the RNIB.)

Experiments on type-sizes and old age are difficult to carry out, and it is never fully clear whether one is investigating the effects of visual impairment or old age, or both, or indeed some other factors. Presumably it is not difficult to set text in 12 (or 14) point in many situations but larger type-sizes lead to less words per given line-length, and this might cause problems with more complex typography. In addition, lengthy texts become bulkier and heavier, factors that might cause problems for the elderly.

Unjustified text

If the reader examines the text of the printed version of this article he or she will find that it has a straight right- and left-hand edge. Technically this is called ´justified' composition. The straight edges are achieved by varying the spaces between the words on each line and sometimes even between the letters within a word. An alternative way of printing text is to use ´unjustified' composition, where the spacing between the words is equal and this leads to a ragged right-hand edge (as in typescript).

The general conclusion reached by many reviewers after examining studies which have compared justified and unjustified text settings is that it makes little difference how the text is set for most readers in most situations and often it is a matter of preference. (See Hartley (1994a) for references.) Difficulties arise for both settings with narrow column widths.

There have been some suggestions in the literature, however, that unjustified text may be more advantageous for older readers and for young children learning to read. Zachrisson (1965), for instance, reported that low-ability adult readers (of unspecified age) read unjustified settings faster than justified ones when the line-lengths contained eight or nine words.

In a more detailed paper Gregory and Poulton (1970) reported the results from a study of justified and unjustified typesettings with participants ranging in age from their mid-twenties to their eighties. These participants were not divided into age groups, but they were classified in terms of their reading ability into three main groups - A, B and C. The results indicated that there were no significant differences in the performances of groups A and B, but that readers in Group C did significantly better with the unjustified settings when the line-lengths were about seven words. Gregory and Poulton replicated these findings in a second study using only Group C readers. In a third study, however, when the line-length was increased to accommodate twelve words, the difference between the settings was no longer significant.

Underlining

Taub (1984) examined the performance of 24 elderly participants (average age 72 years) reading ten passages (average length 700 words) which had selected portions underlined. After reading the passages the participants were required to answer comprehension questions and then to perform a free recall memory test. Taub found that there was no effect of underlining on comprehension, but that underlining helped the recall scores of participants with high vocabulary scores. In a second study (Taub, Sturr and Monty, 1985) the investigators removed the comprehension test, arguing that the results from the free recall test were possibly confounded by this procedure. In this second experiment underlining improved the performance of participants with both high and low vocabulary scores. Taub concluded that underlining can thus help elderly participants to recall more from text.

Improving readability

A number of studies have examined the effects of making text easier to read (see Britton, Gulgoz and Glynn, 1993). A contentious issue in such studies is how to measure the difficulty or readability of a piece of text. There are several measures available, including `readability formulae', each with advantages and limitations (see Hartley, 1994b).

Two studies with older readers on the effects of improving the readability scores of text have taken place in a medical context where, it is generally acknowledged, much material is difficult for the general population. Taub, Baker and Sturr (1986) investigated the effects of re-writing a patient's informed consent form. The original document (283 words long) had a Flesch readability score of 45, which according to the formula, requires 13-18 year old reading skills. A revised version was produced by shortening sentences and simplifying the technical vocabulary. This version had a Flesch score of 76 - i.e. it was now deemed suitable for 12 year old readers.

These documents were read by two groups of readers aged 27-49 years and 50-59 years old. Each group was further subdivided into three groups in terms of their years of education. The participants completed a 10-item multiple choice test on the passage (with the passage freely available to them). The results showed that the older readers had greater difficulties than the younger ones, and that the less well-educated readers had greater difficulties than the better educated ones. However, changing the readability level of the passage had no significant effects.

Conclusions

It is difficult to draw firm conclusions from these six very different studies. Simplifying the tax forms does appear to help the older user. However, some of the other ways of improving the texts outlined in the remaining examples seem to have helped the younger respondents and to have hindered the older ones. The results of these experiments thus suggest that the producers of complex text for the elderly will need to give careful thought to the design of such materials. Morrell and Park (1993) point out that the old people can do the tasks, but that they need additional help. They suggested in the context of their experiment that additional subsets of instructions needed to be prepared for their older participants. One way forward might well be to include elderly participants in any on-going evaluation studies that may be carried out with such texts prior to publication.（essay代写)

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