Demotivated, but still attentive: Text disfluency does not affect mind-wandering and reading comprehension, but reduces motivation.

Abstract

Studies on the relationship between text-processing difficulty, mind wandering, and reading comprehension achieved mixed results. Whereas most studies found mind-wandering frequency to be increased and reading comprehension to be decreased when text processing became more difficult, Faber et al. (Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 24(3), 914-919, 2017) reported an opposite effect when manipulating text difficulty via different font types (i.e., Arial vs. Comic Sans). This effect may reflect a potential of mildly disfluent fonts, such as Comic Sans, to introduce desirable difficulties during reading, thereby enhancing focus on the text. Strongly disfluent fonts, however, may contribute to the commonly observed disadvantages in text focus under conditions of increased text processing difficulty. To test this idea, we conducted a new study (N = 151, student sample) in which we manipulated disfluency in three levels (i.e., fluent, mildly disfluent, strongly disfluent) by using different font types, and compared mind-wandering frequency, reading comprehension, and reading motivation between conditions. The disfluency manipulation affected motivation but not mind wandering or reading comprehension. Additional Bayesian analyses strongly supported the null hypothesis for the latter two. These results suggest that the positive effects of reading disfluency may be less robust than previously assumed and that further research is needed to explore to which extent text-processing difficulty effects on mind wandering are reliant on sample and text characteristics.