Organization and comprehensibility in scientific proofs: or, "Consider a particle p . . ."

Abstract

Scientific texts commonly present principles by first giving a proof and only afterward stating the principle-a «proof-first» organization. This specialized text structure differs from conventional structures in that it lacks thematic information to guide text processing. The current research examined the effects on comprehension of this proof-first organization. This was done by comparing the processing of proof-first texts to that of «principle-first» texts, in which the theme (i.e., the principle) is stated at the beginning