DURANTE LEITURA, ESTÍMULOS VISUAIS, COMO A IMAGEM DO(A) AUTOR(A), PODEM PREJUDICAR O DESEMPENHO DE LEITORES

Abstract

During reading, can visual stimuli, such as the photographic image of the respective author, influence the textual understanding of young readers? This question motivated a study on other meanings, present in communication, in addition to the speaker's meaning. Thus, a group of students in the 9. school year (n = 26) were asked to read texts in two levels of multimodality (unimodal (text only) vs bimodal (text + photo)); and to perform specific inferences tests (choice of alternatives) on the subject read (inference tests). In the end, each participant reported, on an ordinal scale (1 to 10), their level of certainty regarding their choice (assessment tests). The data found point to the existence of a bimodality effect on the inferences about the texts (p = 0.000). This was reinforced by the results of the evaluation tests. However, a more detailed analysis, considering the theme of the texts as an independent variable (text a “Social networks” vs text b “Teenage pregnancy”), showed that the observed effect was of interference and not of facilitation, as expected. This was evidenced especially in the situation of reading the text a (p = 0.01). In short, among juvenile readers, the photos did not function as extraverbal cues, nor were they relevant to reading comprehension. Therefore, it is concluded that the author's expressiveness contributes exclusively to the reception of the message, and not to the understanding of the meaning of the text.