Warning readers to avoid irrelevant information: When being vague might be valuable

Students are often provided with instructions that are intended to influence their attention to particular sections or elements of their reading materials. To date, the bulk of the work on such prereading instructions has focused on drawing reader attention to relevant text information. In the current project, we examined whether instructions might also be useful in helping readers ignore irrelevant (albeit inherently interesting) information in text. In two experiments, prereading instructions asked readers to (a) focus on specific relevant text segments, (b) ignore specific irrelevant text segments, (c) maintain an awareness that the text contained irrelevant segments without specifically identifying them, or (d) read without warnings. Participants generally exhibited longer reading times and enhanced recall for irrelevant segments compared to base content, except in cases for which general instructions warned about but did not specifically identify those irrelevant elements. The implications of these findings for research on seductive details and text processing, as well practical applications for the design of reading instruction, are discussed.

Research highlights
► Instructions can guide attention towards and away from information in text.
► Instructions that generally warn readers that some text might not be useful for comprehension reduce recall of irrelevant information more than specific irrelevance instructions or no instructions.
► The power of seductive details can be reduced through the use of guiding instructions.