Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428

www.elsevier.com/locate/learninstruc

Gender and interest processes in response to

literary texts: situational and individual
interest夽
a,*
Mary Ainley , Kylie Hillman a, Suzanne Hidi b

a
Psychology Department, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
b
OISE/University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Abstract

This investigation examined interest in literary texts among senior secondary students. It
explored how individual and situational factors contribute to topic interest and, using inter-
active computer techniques, monitored reactions to the texts that followed. Eighty-six tenth
graders (equal numbers of boys and girls) participated. Gender was the factor most closely
associated with topic interest, and text titles served as important situational triggers. Individual
interest in literature made a relatively small contribution to topic interest. Whereas a model
linking topic interest, affective responses and persistence operated for higher topic interest
texts, for lower interest texts persistence was influenced only by gender.  2002 Elsevier
Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Gender; Individual interest; Situational interest; Literary text; Affect; Persistence

1. Introduction

Student interest in literary texts is of particular significance for some of the broader
questions concerning achievement among Australian secondary students. Research
on adolescent patterns of participation and achievement in education generally, and
in literacy more particularly, have indicated that there are significant numbers of

夽
This paper was originally presented as part of the Symposium “From situation specific to individual
interest. Is it possible to develop long-lasting student interest in school activities?”, EARLI Conference,
Goteborg, Sweden, August 1999.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: maryda@unimelb.edu.au (M. Ainley).

0959-4752/02/$ - see front matter  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 5 9 - 4 7 5 2 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 0 8 - 1
412 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428

boys who are falling behind the levels of achievement of their female peers (Ainley,
1998; Gilbert, 1998). Understanding the role interest plays in initiating and main-
taining literacy skills will help address this problem. Does student engagement with
particular texts depend upon students coming to the task with a well-developed inter-
est in literature? Does reading further into a text depend on the level of interest
aroused when students first encounter the text? Are these responses to the texts differ-
ent for boys and girls? In order to address these questions we have observed the
level of interest triggered by text topics (topic interest), and considered how this is
influenced by both the individual interests that students bring to the task and situ-
ational factors triggered by features of the text topic. We recorded specific student
responses to reading excerpts from a set of four literary texts, including affective
responses and decisions about how far they continued reading. This real-time record
of student behaviour allowed us to investigate directly issues concerning processes
that are consequences of the arousal of interest. We also examined whether gender
had a significant influence on these processes.

2. Interest, motivation and persistence

Interest is one of a number of motivational variables that have been investigated
in relation to student engagement and learning outcomes. Variables such as task
value (Wigfield & Eccles, 1992), goals (Dweck, 1986; Dweck & Leggett, 1988;
Harackiewicz & Elliot, 1993) and self-regulation (Boekaerts, 1997; Pintrich & Gar-
cia, 1991; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994) all have significant effects on student learn-
ing. Research specifically concerned with interest and learning (e.g., Hoffmann,
Krapp, Renninger, & Baumert, 1998; Krapp, Renninger, & Hidi, 1992; Schiefele,
Krapp, & Winteler, 1992) has focused on both individual interest, relatively stable
orientations that have developed over time, and situational interest that refers to
interest generated by the specific features of the environment/task. To address
important practical issues involved with arousing and maintaining interest in the
service of student learning, it is necessary to achieve a clearer understanding of the
specific roles both individual and situational interest play as motivators of student
learning. The particular objective of the present research is to identify contributions
of individual and situational factors to the level of interest triggered by text topics
and then to monitor responses to those texts.
When a student is presented with the title of a literary text and some basic infor-
mation about its content, this triggers an immediate reaction. The reaction is an
expectancy or anticipatory response and at that point represents the students’ trig-
gered interest in the text topic, here referred to as topic interest. The term topic
interest was first used by Hidi and McLaren (1990) when students were asked to
rate how interested they were in writing about or studying a set of topics generated
from social science themes. Students were reporting how interesting they expected
to find the task. Others such as Schiefele (1996) have used the term to refer to a
relatively enduring evaluation towards certain topics. In this study topic interest is
used to refer to students’ immediate reactions to text titles in terms of how interesting
they expected them to be.
 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428 413

There are a number of factors that may contribute to the level of topic interest
triggered by a set of text titles. As Bergin (1999) has suggested, interest is the out-
come of both individual and situational factors. With respect to individual interest,
students may come to the texts with a well-developed interest in literature. For these
students the titles of the literary texts are likely to trigger topic interest. Alternatively,
individual interest may contribute to the interest triggered by a text title through
some previous involvement with particular issues featured in the text themes. A title
hinting at political intrigue is likely to trigger interest in a person who is a keen
student of international politics.
In addition, there are a number of ways that situational factors might contribute
to levels of topic interest triggered by a set of text titles. Situational interest is likely
to result when themes of universal personal significance are presented (see Anderson,
1982; Anderson, Shirey, Wilson, & Fielding, 1987; Hidi, 1990; Kintsch, 1980;
Schank, 1979; Wade, Buxton, & Kelly, 1999). Titles dealing with issues of life and
death, or themes of general human significance, would be expected to trigger high
levels of topic interest. Other features of text titles such as novelty and ambiguity
would also be situational factors expected to generate high levels of topic interest.
In summary, the level of topic interest triggered when a student is presented with a
set of text titles might be the outcome of a well-developed individual interest. It
might be an immediate response to specific features of the text title, situational inter-
est. Or, it might represent the outcome of both individual and situational interest fac-
tors.
In this investigation one of the main aims was to measure levels of topic interest
for a set of literary texts prescribed for tenth grade students, and to determine whether
levels of topic interest were significantly related to students’ individual interest in a
number of domains including literature. At the same time it was important to deter-
mine whether there were significant differences in the level of interest triggered by
various text titles, and whether such differences could be attributed to specific fea-
tures of those titles, that is, to situational factors.

3. Gender and interest in literary texts

There are some long-established findings linking gender with interest in reading
specific types of text. Boys prefer adventure, sports, science and information, while
girls prefer mystery and romance. Girls are likely to read about male protagonists
and their adventures; boys are less likely to read about female protagonists and their
activities (Norvell, 1958; Thorndike, 1941). On the other hand, Johnson and Green-
baum (1983) suggested that many of these findings have focused on difference to
the exclusion of similarities in the reading interests of boys and girls. In addition
they argued that a substantial number of the research studies were reporting responses
to titles and annotations rather than responses to the actual texts.
It has been widely argued that the gender effects seen in educational research are
an outcome of sets of shared interests, or self-schema (Bergin, 1999; Fivush, 1998).
Davies (1989) reported that students tend to align themselves with characters of their
414 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428

own sex and to interpret what happens from that viewpoint. In a follow-up study,
Daly, Salters, and Burns (1998) found that recall of story content followed significant
gender patterns. The boys in their study outperformed the girls on both immediate
and delayed recall tests when the protagonist was a violent male. Clearly there are
complex gender relationships that are important for understanding student interest
in literary texts. Most of these studies have used elementary school students. With
older students levels of motivation for reading are generally lower. Motivation for
reading appears to decline significantly in the early to middle years of high school
(Eccles, Wigfield, Harold, & Blumenfeld, 1993; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).
In their selection of texts for study by senior secondary students, curriculum plan-
ners have attempted to cater for a wide range of student interests. In the Australian
literacy debate some educators have argued that female students are being disadvan-
taged because more of the main protagonists in prescribed texts are male than female,
and there have been attempts to redress the balance by including more works with
female characters. Other educators have argued that a pressing concern is the number
of male students who are being disadvantaged by the typical texts set for their courses
(Gilbert, 1998). In the present study these issues have been addressed by examining
whether there were significant differences in the general levels of topic interest asso-
ciated with gender, and whether these differences were associated with particular
topics. The study considered whether reported topic interest was associated with the
gender of the main protagonist. Two texts with male protagonists and two with
female protagonists were included in the materials used to measure topic interest.
Hence, an important objective of the study was to determine whether gender plays
a significant part in the way students responded to the set of texts. The importance
of the level of topic interest triggered by the text title is attested by studies that have
reported finding similar performance levels for boys and girls on high interest
material, but when presented with low interest material boys tend to do less well
(Asher & Markell, 1974).

4. Processes following the arousal of interest

The psychological state of interest has been described by Krapp et al. (1992) as a
process involving increased attention, positive affect, concentration, and an increased
willingness to learn. Hidi (1990) proposed that interest affects learning through
determining “how we select and persist in processing certain types of information
in preference to others” (p. 549). Monitoring the processes that follow the arousal
of interest in specific text topics will provide a test of these propositions. In the
current investigation we have specifically focused on variables of positive affect and
persistence, two processes initiated when topic interest is triggered. In this study
positive affect was monitored through students’ responses to set of face icons
presented several times while students were reading the texts. Persistence was defined
as the extent to which students stayed with a text even though they had opportunities
to discontinue their reading. In a study examining the role of motivation in a complex
biology learning task, Vollmeyer and Rheinberg (2000) also measured persistence
 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428 415

through a technique that allowed students to choose how long they spent on their
task. Vollmeyer and Rheinberg investigated persistence as a mediator between stu-
dents’ initial motivation and their task performance.
The present investigation used a computerized recording technique to monitor
student responses across four reading tasks. In this way a number of the key pro-
cesses set in motion when topic interest was triggered could be assessed and we
could identify relationships between specific process variables and their antecedents.
For example, we could examine the association between topic interest and affective
responses, topic interest and persistence. Relationships with reading outcomes in the
form of answers to comprehension and recall questions could also be assessed.
The recording of these variables in their real-time sequence is a significant addition
to the self-report and questionnaire methodologies that have often been employed
in interest research. One common approach in past research has been to have students
fill in questionnaires at the end of a task reporting how interesting it was. This form
of measurement depends on individuals’ reflective judgements and is not necessarily
sensitive to processing changes that may occur across the course of reading. A num-
ber of studies have attempted to get a closer picture of what is happening while the
task is being performed. Schiefele (1996) asked students to complete ratings of acti-
vation, affect and concentration at four points during a reading task. The rating scales
were incorporated into the texts. Boekaerts (1997) has developed an on-line motiv-
ation questionnaire (OMQ) measuring appraisals, affects, attributions and learning
intentions. The OMQ has been used to measure students’ affects and cognitions
immediately before and immediately after learning and homework tasks. The com-
puter monitoring used in our study produced a record of behavioural decisions across
the course of the whole experimental task. Task choices, affective responses,
decisions about continuing or quitting specific texts, and scores on a short test of
comprehension and recall were all recorded. This record of responses then provided
the basis for a dynamic assessment of processing that follows the triggering of inter-
est in a text topic.
In summary, there were three main aims of the investigation. The first was to
determine the relationships between individual and situational factors as they contrib-
uted to topic interest for a set of literary texts prescribed for senior secondary stu-
dents. A second aim was to examine the effects of topic interest on the processing
variables as seen in student responses to reading the texts. The final aim was to
determine the contribution of gender to these relationships.

5. Method

5.1. Participants

The participants in this study were 86 Grade 10 students (39 males and 47 females)
from a parochial co-educational high school in an Australian provincial city. The
school caters for students from a range of social backgrounds including both working
class and middle class families and has students from both rural and urban environ-
416 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428

ments. At the time of data collection the students had a mean age of 15 years 6
months.

5.2. Measures and procedures

5.2.1. Texts
The main experimental task consisted of passages taken from four of the English
novels prescribed on the senior secondary curriculum. The four novels were: Follow
Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro, Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy, The Blooding by
Nadia Wheatley, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. These were not
texts the students had studied in their own classes. The first 900 words of the first
chapter of each novel were used as the reading passages in this study. Each text was
presented using an interactive computer program “Between the Lines” (Ainley,
Hidi, & Tran, 1997). Student responses were recorded on-line as they engaged with
the texts.

5.2.2. Individual interest

Prior to undertaking the reading task, individual interest in literature was measured
using Renninger’s (1992) criteria for individual interests, i.e., an object or activity
the person knows about and values. Separate ratings of knowledge and value were
recorded for five general domains using 5-point Likert scales. These domains were
chosen by the researchers because they were connected with general themes in the
texts. They were as follows: international politics, science and technology, music,
environment and conservation, and literature.

5.2.3. Topic interest

A 5-point Likert-type rating scale was used to measure how interesting students
expected to find each of the texts. This indexed the level of interest triggered when
only the title, author and one sentence about text content were presented. For
example, the text The Handmaid’s Tale was introduced as:

5.2.4. Task measures

The measures recorded by the software included the order students chose to read
the four texts, the amount of time spent with each section of text, measures of affect,
decisions about continuing with each task, the number of sections of each text
 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428 417

accessed, and scores on a short test of comprehension and recall. Details of these
measures are as follows.
Each reading task was divided into three parts (each approximately 300 words).
When a student pressed the button to show they had finished a part of the text, a
panel of faces appeared on the screen. Eleven emotions derived from Izard’s theory
of basic emotions (Izard, 1972) were included on the panel. Students used this panel
to indicate how they were feeling. More than one emotion could be selected. The
emotions chosen provided a measure of the student’s affective response to each
section of each text. After responding to the panel of faces students chose whether
to continue reading that text. If they chose to quit, they were taken to a test of
comprehension and recall, and then back to the topic screen to choose another topic.
If they chose to continue, the next part of the text was presented.
The length of time each part of each text was on the screen was recorded automati-
cally, and the time spent with each part of a text together with the number of sections
chosen for each text were combined into an index of persistence. Following a pilot
study, a cut-off point of 35 seconds was set to distinguish participants who did not
stay with text long enough to have read any substantial part of it. This cut-off point
was used to distinguish reading from simply accessing and then quitting from a text.
Three persistence categories represented the range of responses in this study: 1=read-
ing no parts; 2=reading one part, 3=reading two or three parts. When a student had
finished with a text a three-item multiple choice test of comprehension and recall
was presented. The test questions were tailored to cover only the parts of a text that
had been accessed by each individual student. Together these measures provided a
dynamic assessment of the topic interest triggered by the four texts and the interest
maintained as students continued to read.

6. Results

Three questions were investigated. The first concerned the contribution of individ-
ual and situational factors to topic interest. Individual interest was measured by rat-
ings for a set of general interest domains and tested for relationships with topic
interest. The impact of the specific situation on triggered interest was tested in terms
of the variability in topic interest generated by the four text titles. The second ques-
tion focused on the processes that followed arousal of topic interest and mapped
their relationships with the comprehension and recall test scores. The third question
examined the influence of gender by including gender as a factor in all of the analy-
ses.

6.1. Topic interest: situational factors and gender

In order to test whether there were significant differences in topic interest associa-
ted with the situational factor of text title and with gender, a multivariate analysis
of variance (MANOVA) was used. It was predicted that there would be significant
differences in ratings of topic interest between the four texts. A title such as The
418 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428

Blooding with strong connotations of action and violence would be expected to trig-
ger higher levels of topic interest than would other titles. In addition, the expectation
of significant gender influences on topic interest meant that a significant gender by
topic interaction was predicted. For example, Follow Your Heart, which suggested
themes of love and relationships, was expected to trigger a larger difference between
the girls and the boys than would The Blooding. Gender was entered in the analysis
as the between-subjects factor and text topic as the within-subjects repeated measures
variable. The multivariate tests indicated a significant gender by topic effect
[F(3,82)=3.27, p=0.025, h2=0.11]. The between-subjects test for the effect of gender
was significant [F(1,84)=47.30, p⬍0.001, h2=0.36], and the pairwise comparisons
analysis for the effect of topic was also significant [F(3,82)=29.61, p⬍0.001,
h2=0.52]. The main effect of topic and the pattern of the topic by gender interaction
can both be seen in Fig. 1.
There were substantial differences in ratings of topic interest across the four texts.
Maestro aroused the least topic interest (M (mean)=2.36) while The Blooding aroused
the strongest level of interest (M=3.56). As can be seen from Fig. 1, girls indicated
higher topic interest for all four texts than boys. However this gender effect varied
across the texts. As predicted, the largest gender difference was for Follow Your
Heart (ES (effect size)=1.14), and the smallest gender difference was for The Blood-
ing (ES=0.55). Fig. 1 also indicates that the significant differences in topic interest
associated with gender were not consistently associated with gender of the main
protagonist in the text. Boys gave significantly higher topic interest ratings to The
Handmaid’s Tale (M=2.56) with a female protagonist than to Maestro (M=2.08) with

Fig. 1. Mean topic interest ratings by topic and gender.

 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428 419

a male protagonist. In addition, the girls gave significantly higher topic interest rat-
ings to The Blooding (M=3.81) with a male protagonist than to Follow Your Heart
(M=3.40) with a female protagonist.

6.2. Topic interest: individual interest and gender

To test for significant relationships between individual interest and topic interest
across the four texts, several analyses were conducted. In the first analysis individual
interest in literature was tested for significant associations with topic interest. Individ-
ual interest in literature was measured by student ratings of their knowledge of litera-
ture and the value it had for them. There were significant gender differences in
scores on the individual interest in literature ratings, with girls rating both literature-
knowledge and literature-value significantly higher than did boys (knowledge:
M=3.40 and M=2.59; value: M=3.70 and M=2.62, respectively). The zero-order cor-
relations between topic interest and students’ ratings of their knowledge and valuing
of the literature interest domain are presented in Table 1. The correlations between
literature-knowledge ratings and topic interest were generally lower than the litera-
ture-value and topic interest correlations. For the highest topic interest text, The
Blooding, there were significant associations between topic interest and both litera-
ture-knowledge and literature-value ratings. Across the four texts literature-value rat-
ings correlated significantly with topic interest. It should be noted that knowledge
and value ratings for literature were more highly correlated with each other than
with the topic interest ratings.
Regression analyses were also conducted whereby the topic interest scores were
regressed on to each of the two individual interest domain ratings separately. Because
of the significant relationships between gender and both individual interest and topic
interest measures, gender was also included in these analyses. The results indicated
gender as a significant predictor of topic interest but there were no significant
regression equations that demonstrated an independent contribution of the literature-
knowledge or literature-value ratings to topic interest. For Follow Your Heart, stu-
dents’ ratings of how much they valued literature were just outside the criterion for
significance (b=0.23, t=1.96, p=0.054). This was also the case with the ratings of
how much students knew about literature and topic interest for The Blooding text

Table 1
Zero-order correlations for individual interest (literature domain) and topic interest

Text topic Literature ratingsa

Knowledge Value

The Blooding 0.38** 0.36**

The Handmaid’s Tale 0.20 0.26**
Follow Your Heart 0.28* 0.42**
Maestro 0.19 0.28**

a
Knowledge and value, r=0.062. *p⬍0.05. **p⬍0.01.
420 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428

(b=0.24, t=1.89, p=0.06). To test for any contribution across the multivariate design,
the gender by topic repeated measures analysis was performed again with individual
interest in literature as a covariate. Because there was a strong correlation between
the knowledge and value ratings on the literature interest domain, the value and
knowledge ratings were each run as a covariate in separate analyses. The literature-
knowledge rating did not yield a significant association with topic interest but when
the literature-value rating was entered as covariate there was a significant relationship
with topic interest [F(1,83)=6.70, p=0.01, h2=0.08]. Although reaching the criterion
for statistical significance, it was clear from the results that students’ literature-value
rating only accounted for a small part of the variance in topic interest, whereas
gender accounted for a substantial proportion [F(1,83)=27.29, p⬍0.001, h2=0.25].
A further test of the association between topic interest and individual interest was
performed using the set of knowledge and value ratings for the five individual interest
domains (international politics, science and technology, music, environment and con-
servation, and literature — 5×2 ratings). A principal components analysis was used
to reduce this set to a smaller number of individual interest domains. The 10 ratings
were factored using principal components analysis and this produced a solution
where three factors had eigenvalues greater than one. Before rotation these three
factors together accounted for 63.91% of the variance (36.16%, 17.20% and 10.55%,
respectively). Varimax rotation produced a set of factors that grouped together high
loadings on the knowledge and value ratings for the international politics, and
environment and conservation domains as Factor 1 (global issues). Factor 2 grouped
the literature and science and technology variables into what appeared to be an inter-
est in schooling factor. Factor 3 grouped the knowledge and value ratings for the
music domain. Factor scores were then used in further analyses. Of the three factors
only Factor 2 (schooling) had significant differences associated with gender, the girls
scoring significantly higher than the boys. These factor scores were independent
measures and so all three were then entered as covariates in a multivariate analysis of
the relationships between gender, individual interest and topic interest. This analysis
produced significant between-subjects effects for Factor 1 — global issues
[F(1,81)=6.62, p=0.01, h2=0.08], and Factor 2 — schooling [F(1,81)=4.49, p=0.04,
h2=0.05]. Although accounting for some of the variation in topic interest, these indi-
vidual interest domain effects were small when compared with the independent vari-
ance accounted for by gender [F(1,81)=24.86, p⬍0.001, h2=0.24].
From these results it is clear that both individual and situational factors contributed
to levels of topic interest. A substantial part of the variation in levels of topic interest
was associated with students’ gender. In addition there were differences in the levels
of interest triggered by the four text topics that indicated topic interest to be, in part,
a function of the text title itself (situational interest). Individual interest in literature
measured in terms of personal value also made a small contribution to topic interest
across the four texts.
6.3. Topic interest and text responses
According to Krapp et al. (1992), the psychological state of interest is associated
with attention, concentration, positive affect and willingness to learn. This investi-
 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428 421

gation was designed to test some of these relationships. The on-line recording of
student responses allowed tracking of the sequence of events that followed arousal
of topic interest, in particular affective responses and persistence with the texts. It
was possible to test the predictive relations between these elements and then to assess
their associations with scores on the short test of comprehension and recall.
Three variables were measured using the on-line recording: affective responses,
persistence and test score. Affect was measured through students choosing face icons
to indicate how they felt. Two practice trials were given at the beginning of the
computer program. Students were asked on the first practice trial to use the panel
of faces to indicate how they would feel when taking a mathematics test, and on
the second, to indicate how they would feel when hearing they had won a two-
week holiday of their choice. Responses to these two practice items showed good
discrimination. The most frequently chosen emotions for taking a mathematics test
were neutral and scared (61%), and for the holiday situation the most frequently
chosen were happy and surprised (92%). In the actual study, each text consisted of
three parts; at the end of part 1, students indicated how they were feeling and then
made a decision either to continue reading or to quit. Three of the faces (interested,
neutral and bored) together accounted for between 84% (The Handmaid’s Tale) and
100% (The Blooding) of the first emotion choices at the end of part 1 of the texts.
The proportion choosing to continue at the end of the first part of the texts varied
from 22% on Maestro to 47% on The Blooding. This pattern of choice indicated
that the level of involvement with the texts was not high.
A substantial number of students chose to terminate reading as soon as the chance
was offered. An index of persistence was constructed to represent students’ overall
level of interaction with a text. This index of persistence was based on both the
amount of time spent with each part of the text and how many parts were accessed.
Three levels of persistence were classified (see Method). There was considerable
variation in persistence between texts, ranging from 16% accessing two or more
parts for Maestro to 38% accessing two or more parts for The Blooding. Test scores
were compiled from responses to a short test of comprehension and recall adminis-
tered in the program at the point when students either quit from a text or reached
the end of part 3. For each student the test items dealt only with the parts of the
text accessed.
Regression analyses were used to determine the direct and indirect effects of topic
interest on responses and decisions occurring during the reading of each text. Because
of its strong association with topic interest, gender was also included as a variable
in these analyses. The significant associations within these sets of variables are shown
in Table 2.
As Table 2 indicates, gender was strongly associated with the measures of topic
interest and persistence for all four texts. Girls reported higher topic interest and
were likely to persist further with the texts than were the boys. These correlations
were stronger for the lower interest text topics, Maestro and Follow Your Heart.
Topic interest was significantly related to the affective responses for the two texts
with higher topic interest scores, The Blooding and The Handmaid’s Tale. Higher
topic interest was more likely to be followed by a report of feeling interested, lower
422 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428

Table 2
Zero-order correlations and regression results (adjusted r2): topic interest and text response variablesa

Variable and text Gender Topic Affect Persistence Adjusted r2

interest

Topic interest The Blooding ⫺0.28**

The Handmaid’s Tale ⫺0.41**
Follow Your Heart ⫺0.58**
Maestro ⫺0.44**
Affect The Blooding ⫺0.23 0.38** 0.14**
The Handmaid’s Tale ⫺0.28* 0.31** 0.11**
Follow Your Heart ⫺0.27* 0.20 ns
Maestro ⫺0.22 0.08 ns
Persistence The Blooding ⫺0.31** 0.43** 0.51** 0.36**
The Handmaid’s Tale ⫺0.35** 0.43** 0.46** 0.33**
Follow Your Heart ⫺0.49** 0.50** 0.43** 0.42**
Maestro ⫺0.40** 0.34** 0.11 0.17**
Test score The Blooding ⫺0.06 0.26* 0.10 0.50** 0.25**
The Handmaid’s Tale ⫺0.08 0.07 0.16 0.32** ns
Follow Your Heart ⫺0.17 0.16 0.27* 0.25* ns
Maestro ⫺0.09 0.05 ⫺0.14 0.15 ns

a
Note: gender scored female=0; male=1. *, p⬍0.05; **, p⬍0.01; ns=not significant.

topic interest with feeling bored. Topic interest was also strongly related to persist-
ence for all four texts. Higher topic interest scores were associated with reading
more parts of a text. For all but one text there were significant positive relationships
between affect and persistence, and also between persistence and scores on the test
at the end of the program. The correlations between persistence and test scores
decreased in line with the different levels of topic interest triggered by the text titles.
The strongest correlation was for The Blooding while for the lowest topic interest
text, Maestro, there was no significant correlation between persistence and test score.
The results of regression analyses for all four texts are displayed in Table 2
(adjusted r2 values) and Fig. 2 (significant path coefficients). The paths for the two
higher topic interest texts (The Blooding, M=3.56 and The Handmaid’s Tale, M=3.08)
are presented in Fig. 2(a), and the paths for the two lower topic interest texts (Follow
Your Heart, M=2.80 and Maestro, M=2.36) in Fig. 2(b).
For all four texts gender had a direct effect on topic interest but the paths following
topic interest varied according to the level of topic interest. For the high topic interest
texts [Fig. 2(a)], topic interest had a direct effect on persistence as well as an indirect
effect through the affective response reported at the end of the first part of the text.
Part 1 of each text was the only part that the experimental design required all students
to access and this requirement was one of opening the text screen but not necessarily
reading it all. Topic interest triggered by the text title was associated with positive
affect and persistence. Both texts had significant correlations between persistence
and test score but only for The Blooding did this model account for a significant
part of the variance in test score.
 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428 423

Fig. 2. Significant regression paths from topic interest to recall. (a) Higher topic interest texts, (b) lower
topic interest texts.

For the two texts that triggered lower levels of topic interest (Fig. 2(b)), gender
also made a significant contribution to level of persistence. Girls were more likely
to persist with a text that had been rated of lower interest. Follow Your Heart also
had a significant relationship between topic interest and persistence. The set of four
path diagrams suggests that for these texts the processing variables following the
initial response to the text depend on the level of topic interest triggered. For the
Maestro text, rated lowest for topic interest, there was no significant contribution of
the topic interest and affect variables. In contrast the text rated highest for topic
interest, showed topic interest being followed by affective processes that influenced
persistence which in turn influenced test score.
The differences between the path models shown in Fig. 2 are consistent with the
conclusion that when topic interest is triggered this will influence affective responses,
persistence with the text, and ultimately learning. Student gender was an important
424 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428

variable contributing to the level of topic interest triggered. When this was low
gender also influenced the degree of persistence with the text; girls were more likely
than boys were to continue reading a text that was of lower topic interest.

7. Discussion

There were three main aims of the investigation. The first was to determine the
relationships between individual and situational factors as they contributed to topic
interest for a set of literary texts prescribed for senior secondary students. A second
aim was to examine the effects of topic interest on the processing variables recorded
as students responded to the texts. The final aim was to determine the contribution
of gender to these relationships. These issues will be discussed in turn and, as gender
was a significant factor in a number of the analyses, it will be discussed as it related
to these issues.

7.1. Triggering topic interest

7.1.1. Gender
A substantial portion of the variation in topic interest was associated with students’
gender. The girls responded with higher levels of topic interest to all of the text
topics. The interaction between gender and text topic also demonstrated that there
were texts that could trigger interest in the boys, and that arousal of interest was
not simply a matter of the gender of the protagonist. Having a male as the central
character of the story did not guarantee interest for the boys. These findings are
consistent with the writings of Bergin (1999) and Fivush (1998) proposing that an
important part of the functional significance of gender is the shared interests. This
is part of what students bring with them to a literary text and, on the basis of these
results, is an important factor in their reaction to that text.

7.1.2. Situational interest

Variations in topic interest were also related to the actual content of the text title.
The highest level of topic interest was triggered by the text title The Blooding. The
clear association of this title with themes of intrigue, death and violence (see Ander-
son, 1982; Anderson et al., 1987; Hidi, 1990; Kintsch, 1980; Schank, 1979; Wade &
Adams, 1990) was sufficient to trigger an expectation that something engaging will
follow. In contrast, the title Maestro did not arouse similar levels of anticipation.
The variability in topic interest observed across these text titles not accounted for
by the association between topic interest and gender indicated that an important part
of students’ responsiveness to text titles lies in the character of the titles themselves.
These findings confirm that the levels of arousal triggered by text titles cannot be
fully explained without reference to situational factors. As Hidi (see Hidi, 2000;
Hidi, Berndorff, & Ainley, 2002) has suggested, certain conditions or stimuli trigger
situational interest, a relatively immediate affective reaction. Attention becomes
focused. This psychological state of interest, once triggered, may or may not be
 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428 425

maintained. Further investigation of the bases of the situational component in both

triggering and maintaining interest will provide guidance for planning how to stimu-
late and hold interest in reluctant readers.
7.1.3. Individual interest
A further source contributing to the arousal of interest in these texts was the
individual interest in literature and schooling that students brought to the texts. It is
important to note that individual interest as represented by these domains made a
significant, but not large, contribution to topic interest. The individual interest
domains in the present study may not have sampled some of the critical domains
through which individual interest contributes to topic interest for literary texts of the
type prescribed in senior secondary English classes. Inclusion of a wider set of indi-
vidual interest domains may be needed to identify other areas of individual interest
that contribute to arousal of topic interest for specific texts.
7.2. Processes following topic interest
What happened beyond the arousal of topic interest was of particular concern for
this investigation. The affective responses and levels of persistence with the texts
indicated that the triggering of topic interest sets in motion a sequence of processes
including positive affect and persistence. The level of topic interest and the emotions
reported at the end of the first part of the text contributed to the decision to continue
or to quit. These variables also influenced further involvement with the texts as
represented in the persistence index. The important finding from the pattern of these
associations was that topic interest with its associated affect contributed to continued
interaction of students with the texts (persistence), and that the level of persistence
with a text was significantly correlated with recall.
Analysis of the paths of direct and indirect influence among these processing vari-
ables demonstrated that the level of topic interest was important for what followed.
For the higher topic interest texts, there was a direct effect of topic interest on persist-
ence coupled with an indirect path operating through the affect reported at the end
of reading part 1 of the text. Thus, topic interest influenced recall through its effect
on students’ further interaction with the text. These results support the model of
interest processes proposed by Krapp et al. (1992), who identified the psychological
state of interest, represented in this study by topic interest, as one involving positive
affect, attention, concentration and an increased willingness to learn. Additional
research is needed to establish whether this sequence between the arousal of interest
and learning applies to other types of text triggering relatively high levels of topic
interest.
For the lower interest texts the significant path was a direct effect of gender on
topic interest and persistence. Girls were more likely to persist with these texts while
the boys were more likely disengage. These results are consistent with a number of
findings (e.g., Anderson et al., 1987; Asher & Markell, 1974; Hidi & Berndorff,
1998; Hidi et al., 2002) showing that the performance of boys and girls tends to be
similar on high interest material, but that when presented with low interest material
boys do less well.
426 M. Ainley et al. / Learning and Instruction 12 (2002) 411–428

7.3. Conclusions

The results of this study are important in their demonstration that it is possible
to map the relationships between processing variables that are triggered by the arou-
sal of topic interest. Using a methodology that tracks the processing sequence in real
time has provided a means for addressing some of the important issues associated
with understanding of the ways interest influences student learning. This method
offers a way of disentangling some of the relationships between processes set in
train through the arousal of topic interest. Further development of this methodology
will enable us to address in more detail important questions concerning factors that
contribute to arousal of student interest in literary texts. The findings of these studies
can then be used to inform curriculum decisions.
In our study many of the students took the opportunity to discontinue reading the
texts well before reaching the end of the selections that were presented. Hence this
analysis has not dealt with the issue of identifying factors that maintain student
involvement with literary texts (see Mitchell, 1993). Further research is needed to
identify how individual and situational factors influence students’ decisions to con-
tinue reading literary texts.

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