Anticipating reader problems

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Anticipating reader problems

• Leo Lentz - Utrecht University
• Menno de Jong - University of Twente

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Presentation outline

• Introduction
• Three cognitive shortcuts
• Focus on anchoring and adjustment
• Design of project
• Case analysis
• Conclusion

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Writing and the curse of expertise

• A key issue in professional writing is
  anticipating the readers needs
• Results of usability studies professional
  writers fail to predict reader problems
• Why is it so difficult to anticipate the problems
  readers will experience?

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Three cognitive shortcuts

• Availability
• experts rely on a failing memory of their own
  novice performance
• Oversimplification
• experts have automated the process and lose
  sight of complexity
• Anchoring and adjustment
• experts anchor on their own performance and fail
  to adjust adequately for differences in skills

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• Mobile phones / Lego
• Focus on acting with objects
• Predicting time performance
• Recall of past performance
• Task can be decomposed

• Writing and reading
• Focus on cognitive processes
• Predicting specific reader problems
• No recall of past performance
• Reading process can not be decomposed

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Anchoring and adjustment

• Predicting reader problems implies
• reading the text with a high level of
  metacognition
• assessing every problem detection using two
  criteria
• Will readers really experience this problem
  (chance)?
• What damage will this problem do (severity)?
• Question How do anchoring and adjusting come
  manifest in expert reflections on reader
  problems?

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Focus on part of writing process

• planning / structuring
• writing and revision
• editing or proofreading
• predicting reader problems
• assessing problem detections

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Experts assess reader problems

• A government brochure for young adults on alcohol
  was evaluated (N 30 / 200)
• We made a selection of ten reader problems
• Experts in communication (N18) read
• the text
• and these ten reader problems
• They assessed every problem on chance and
  severity and provided arguments

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Anchoring

• On personal reading experience
• I did have problems in understanding this
  fragment
• On the document
• This text clearly says that
• On professional knowledge
• The style of this fragment is rather elaborate
  and wordy
• A heading should always
• On the producer of the text
• I think the author did a good job
• On the editing role
• I should not know how to say it more clearly

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Adjustment

• Reflection on possible interpretations of a
  fragment
• The first sentence may lead to the interpretation
  that
• Reflection on readersattitudes or world
  knowledge
• Readers might lose confidence in the author,
  having made this interpretation
• Reflection on the function of the document
• This document does not convince the readers
• Reflection on audience segments
• Some readers might think so, but most readers
  will

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Anchoring problems (1) False consensus

• The expert refers to a problem experienced and
  claims that readers will also experience it.
• In earlier research we demonstrated that experts
  use other evaluation standards than readers. More
  focus on correctness and structure (Lentz/De
  Jong, 1997)
• Experts produce lots of false alarms and do not
  agree on problem detections (De Jong/Lentz 1996)
• The expert did not experience a problem and thus
  claims that readers will have no problem.
• Experts miss problems regarding reader attitudes

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Anchoring problems (2) The knowledge effect

• Experts mix up text editing with anticipating
  reader problems
• They rely on knowledge of professional guidelines
• They reframe reader comments in terms of these
  guidelines
• They concentrate on stylistic issues as if proof
  reading a draft of the document
• They tend to detect only problems they know how
  to solve and neglect problems they cant solve.

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Adjustment problems (1)

• Experts do not adjust their own reading
  experience to other readers
• They are unable to switch from a text production
  perspective to a reception perspective.
• They do not relate their comments to the
  functions of the document.

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Adjustment problems (2)

• Experts overestimate the readers
• They fail to adjust to readers with lower
  education and less topic knowledge
• They fail to adjust to readers with negative
  attitudes
• They sometimes blame the readers for not
  understanding or not accepting

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Conclusion

• Experts experience problems in assessing reader
  problems, caused by anchoring and adjusting
  inadequately.
• Two main anchoring problems experts
  overgeneralise their own experience and suffer
  from the knowledge effect.
• Two adjustment problems experts stick to a text
  production perspective and fail to adjust to
  readers knowledge and attitudes.