1. How Do Our Readers
Really Think, Understand, and Decide—
Despite What They Know?
Mark Hochhauser, Ph.D.
email: MarkH38514@aol.com
PLAIN2013
9th Conference and 20th Anniversary of
Plain Language Association International
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
October 2013

2. Writing, reading, judging and deciding
are neurobiological processes:
They take place in
different parts of the brain
So give some thought
to how a reader’s brain
actually processes
what your brain writes.

3. Plain language benefits some, not all
Text comprehension studies
1. “…word knowledge is critical for good
comprehension. Vocabulary is the single
best predictor of comprehension ability.”
2. “…a reader needs to know the meanings
of 90 percent of the individual words
contained within a text in order to
comprehend it.”

4. 3. Readers need to understand about
98% of the vocabulary for adequate
text comprehension
• Vocabulary did not strongly correlate with
language comprehension or verbal fluency in
adults with low literacy.
• Low literacy adults haven’t made the shift
from word recognition to language
comprehension.

5. All readers are not the same
Reading, comprehension and cognition are
affected by:
1) Aging brain; Learning disabilities,
attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
2) How reading comprehension is measured
and on whom

6. 3) Health problems
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•
•
•
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•
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adult coronary syndrome
medical inpatient experience
chemotherapy (chemobrain)
metabolic syndrome
common medical conditions
type II diabetes
drug addiction
traumatic brain injury
menopausal transition
vascular risk factors

7. Five Judgment and Decision Making
Strategies
“Law of least effort”:
If there are several ways to achieve the
same goal,
readers will eventually take the least
demanding route.

8. Less demanding routes to a decision
• Two Thinking Systems
• Information Overload
• Intuition
• Heuristics
• Framing

9. 1. Thinking strategies:
Two Thinking Systems
Logical/Analytical Emotion/Intuition
(Good?)
(Bad?)
Decisions are emotional first;
logical second.

10. Logical/Analytical Emotion/Intuition
a) Slow decisions
a) Fast decisions
b) Controlled
b) Automatic
c) Much effort
c) No effort
d) Complex analysis
d) Habitual
e) Sensible and logical
e) Emotional
memories; feelings
f) Delayed decisions
f) Immediate

11. 2. Information Overload
How much information can
a reader store in “working memory?”
• Early research: 7, + 2 or about 5 – 9 items
• Later research: 3 – 5 items
• More recent: 4-7, depending on age:
Peaks around age 25 – 35

12. A reader’s brain can only process a
limited amount of information;
especially in the aging brain
If cognitively overloaded,
readers must use other ways
to reach a conclusion
or make a decision.

13. 3. Intuition: Knowledge without reasoning
Direct perception of truth or fact
independent of any reasoning process
Involves selective focus on specific aspects
of an experience
• “Knowing without awareness”—automatically
(unconsciously) not cognitively (consciously)
• “Thin slicing”—”the ability of our unconscious
to find patterns in situations and behavior based
on narrow slices of experience”

14. 4. Heuristic strategies: simplify complex
choices by finding adequate answers to
difficult questions
How to pick a Medicare
supplemental health plan:
a) Analyze all of the online and printed
information available to compare plans—a
complicated and time consuming task;
requires good research skills

15. b) Affect heuristic:
eliminate plan “M” because previous
bad experience = painful emotions and
memory
c) Effort heuristic:
More value given to work that takes
more time, especially if value is
ambiguous.

16. 5. Psychological Framing
Framing: using different ways to present
the same information
• Beef is 75% lean (a healthy gain)
• Beef is 25% fat (an unhealthy loss)
They mean the same, but are interpreted
differently.

17. Conclusions
1. Plain language may make
information more comprehensible for
some readers, but not all.
2. There are limits to how much
information a reader’s brain can
remember and process.
3. The reader’s brain will come with its
own ways to make decisions.

18. References
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