The Art (and Science) of Seduction: Why, When, and for Whom Seductive Details Matter

Summary In this commentary, the two critical attributes of seductive details are described through a historical lens: relevance and interest. For each of these attributes, various forms that have populated the seductive detail literature are distinguished, and the specific manner in which each is interpreted by contributors to the Special Issue is considered. The forms of relevance overviewed are personal, structural, instructional, and task relevance. For interest, distinctions between individual and situational interest are noted, and the concept of interestingness is delineated. With this historical backdrop, the studies in this Special Issue are analyzed, and four provocative questions are posed: When are "seductive details" not seductive? What contextual factors contribute to seduction? For whom is seduction a problem? When is the solution worse than the problem?

Keywords: comprehension; interest; learning; relevance; seductive details

My history with seductive details research is professionally long and personally deep. In fact, I was privileged to witness the creation of the concept, seductive detail, which was the brainchild of my academic advisor, Ruth Garner. We had been engaged for some time in the study of interest both collaboratively and independently and were generally cognizant of the potential side effects of trying to make texts more situationally appealing to readers. As Deweyites, we often repeated his prophetic words that it may appear expedient to take bland and uninteresting instructional content and use some "trick of method to arouse interest, to make it interesting; to cover it with sugar‐coating; to conceal its barrenness by intermediate and unrelated material; and finally, as it were, to get the child to swallow and digest the unpalatable morsel" (Dewey, [8], p. 30). One side effect of such instructional ruses is to convey to students that the content to be learned is not interesting in and of itself. Another is the misdirection of attention from what should be of importance to those enticements.

With the writing of Dewey as the backdrop, the notion of the seductive detail effect was born and empirically tested in Garner, Gillingham, and White ([12]). Simply defined, seductive details are "propositions presenting interesting, but unimportant, information" (p. 41). The idea of the seductive detail was also informed by the research of Hidi and colleagues (Hidi & Baird, [17], [18]; Hidi, Baird, & Hildyard, [19]) who studied the disconnect between interest and importance in exposition and who expressed concern about the effect of this disconnect on learning from text. The guiding hypothesis of the seductive detail effect was that the presence of highly interesting but irrelevant or unimportant textual information would be detrimental to readers' recall of more relevant or important, if less alluring, content. To test this hypothesis, Garner et al. crafted a three‐paragraph expository text describing differences among insects. As the segment below illustrates, each paragraph opened with a sentence summarizing its main idea and contained a detail (e.g., click beetles flipping) that had been rated as interesting but tangential to the paragraph's main point (e.g., insects' living habits). Some insects live alone, and some live in large families. Wasps that live alone are called solitary wasps. A Mud Dauber Wasp is a solitary wasp. Click Beetles live alone. When a Click Beetle is on its back, it flips itself into the air and lands right side up while it makes a clicking noise. Ants live in large families. There are many kinds of ants. Some ants live in trees. Black Ants live in the ground. (p. 46)

In Study 1, 20 graduate students read the experimental texts either with or without the seductive detail sentence. After reading, participants were asked to (a) recall only the important information (macropropositions), (b) rate interestingness of the text, (c) list the most interesting piece of information, and (d) accurately describe salient differences among insects described in the text (micropropositions). In Study 2, the experimental text was modified so that the main idea of each paragraph was either redundantly signaled (e.g., It is an important fact about insects that some live alone, and some live in large families) or not. The participants for this study were seventh graders. For these younger readers, those presented with the text containing seductive details did significantly worse on recalling both the main points and the salient details than did those who read the text without those irrelevant but highly interesting sentences, whether they received the signaled or nonsignaled text version.

In trying to understand the power of seductive details to disrupt recall for even competent readers, even when the texts were quite brief and well structured, Garner et al. ([12]) offered several plausible explanations. For the competent readers in Study 1, one such explanation was that encountering the irrelevant details disrupted the readers' formation of a coherent text base (Kintsch & van Dijk, [24]). When it came to the results for the seventh grader readers and their struggles with both the macropropositions and micropropositions when seductive details were present, an alternative explanation was forwarded. Specifically, Garner et al. speculated that these younger readers confronted an "overload of cognitive capacity ... We assume that the children simply could not think actively about all relevant micropropositions ... plus the irrelevant micropropositions" (p. 55).

With the instigating study summarized, what I want to do is to look more closely at the two salient attributes that define some unit of information as a seductive detail, relevance (or importance) and interestingness. For both of these attributes, I consider how they have historically been characterized and then juxtapose the orientations toward relevance and interest taken by the contributors to this Special Issue as a measure of conceptual continuity or discontinuity.

Although Garner was influenced by Dewey's writings on interest, her approach to relevance differed (Garner et al., [12]; Garner, Alexander, Gillingham, Kulikowich, & Brown, [11]). Specifically, for Dewey, relevance reflected a meaningful association between the individual and the object of learning (i.e., personal relevance), whereas Garner viewed relevance from the vantage point of the text structure (i.e., structural relevance; Kintsch & van Dijk, [24]; Williams, [49]). That structure was reflected in the macropropositions and micropropositions previously described. Relevant information was tied to the macropropositions or micropropositions, whereas irrelevant information was peripheral to this propositional structure.

It was not long after the publication of the Garner et al. ([12]) article that other researchers were drawn into the study of seductive details and their effects on comprehension. As with Garner et al., these were text comprehension researchers for whom the determination of relevance was made in relation to the overall propositional structure of the written document (Alexander, Kulikowich, & Schulze, [5]; Wade, Buxton, & Kelly, [45]; Wade, Schraw, Buxton, & Hayes, [47]). In addition to propositional analysis, there was consideration of readers' cognitive and metacognitive ability to discern the overarching structure of the text and to regulate attention appropriately. In all these studies, the seductive detail effect was replicated even with marked variations in target populations, text topics, length, and outcome measures. For example, the seductive detail effect was upheld when the short, highly structured exposition that Garner et al. used in that initial study gave way to more extended and mixed texts (Alexander & Jetton, [4]). Those mixed texts included a passage about Horatio Nelson's naval victories sprinkled with tangential information about his love affairs or mangled arm (Wade & Adams, [46]). There were also passages about Stephen Hawking's search for the Grand Unification Theory that mentioned a bet he made with Roger Penrose involving Penthouse magazine or that brought up his affair with his nurse (Alexander et al., [5]; Garner et al., [11]).

Texts of a multimedia nature are also central to Richard Mayer's studies of seductive details, (Harp & Mayer, [15]; Mayer, Griffith, Jurkowitz, & Rothman, [31]). Similar to Garner et al.'s ([12]) insect text, these tend to be quite brief, highly structured expositions. However, there are critical differences in Mayer's approach to the study of seductive details and to the determination of relevance. For instance, because Mayer framed his research around multimedia learning and his attempts to derive principles to guide the development of multimedia materials that promoted learning (Mayer, [30]; Moreno & Mayer, [35]), his relatively brief expository texts included information sources other than text (e.g., picture or illustration; Harp & Mayer, [15]; Mayer et al., [31]). Further, Mayer's preference has been for texts describing scientific phenomena that delineate a specific procedure or causal mechanism. This preference for texts with a well‐specified instructional purpose is perhaps best exemplified by his infamous "lightning passage" (Harp & Mayer, [14]), referenced by several contributors to this Special Issue (Eitel, Bender, & Renkl, [10]; Kühl, Moersdorf, Römer, & Münzer, [25]).

Thus, given these conditions, the relevance of textual or visual information in Mayer's studies (Harp & Mayer, [14], [15]) was judged by whether that information supported that instructional purpose or not. In view of this focus, I refer to this particular orientation as instructional relevance. It was interesting to observe that several contributors to this Special Issue, while citing the Garner et al. ([12]) definition of a seductive detail, made reference to instructional goals or purposes. For example, Eitel et al. ([10], p. X) stated that "seductive details were operationalized according to their definition of being interesting but irrelevant to achieving the instructional goals (e.g., Garner et al., [12])" (my italics). Similarly, Abercrombie et al. ([1], p. XX) defined seductive details as interesting information that was "extraneous to the learning goals of the instructional material." Yet as discussed, Garner and colleagues were concerned with what was relevant or important on the basis of the text structure and not what might be judged on the basis of the instructional goal of the text.

In concurrence with Mayer, Eitel et al. ([10]) and Abercrombie et al. ([1]) hold that the instructional goal for a given piece of exposition should be internal to the text. Granted, there is undoubtedly some correspondence between the macropropositions that Garner et al. ([12]) describe and the instructional goal that Mayer and other multimedia researchers (Schneider, Wirzberger, & Rey, [39]; Wiley, Sarmento, & Griffin, [48]) address, but these may not coalesce when texts are not carefully orchestrated, brief exposition like the insects or lightning passages. A perusal of the articles in this Special Issue suggests that instructional relevance was a preferred orientation among the multimedia contributors (e.g., Ketzer‐Nöltge, Schweppe, & Rummer, [23]). In other cases, the orientation toward relevance was difficult to ascertain from the information provided or the novel form of the multimedia materials used (Jarosz & Jaeger, [21]; Tsai, Wu, Sheu, & Chen, [44]).

One other orientation toward relevance or importance can be identified in the seductive detail literature. As discussed by McCrudden ([32]), a determination of relevance or irrelevance can reflect the alignment between information conveyed in the instructional materials and the parameters of a given task to be accomplished using those materials (task relevance; Lehman & Schraw, [26]; McCrudden & Schraw, [33]). In those instances, information pertinent to task performance is deemed relevant, whereas content tangential to the task is classified as irrelevant. From this perspective, the better specified the task, the easier it should be for learners to discern the difference between task relevant and irrelevant information, even in the face of seductive details. Also, signaling, as a way to draw readers' attention to task relevant elements, can be facilitative to accessing and remembering that relevant content, something well documented since the 1980s (Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, [34]). Yet even under such conditions, highly interesting but unimportant information continues to seduce (Lehman & Schraw, [26]; McCrudden, [32]).

One intriguing finding regarding task relevance that Schraw, Wade, and Kardash ([42]) reported was that this form of relevance interacted with structural relevance. Specifically, what these researchers determined was that information that was task relevant was remembered regardless of whether it was high or low in structural importance. However, information that was task irrelevant was remembered well only if it was high in structural importance. What is not known is how the insertion of seductive details, which are irrelevant to either task or text structure, might alter this task–text interaction.

In bringing this discussion of relevance to a close, let me share several key insights to be discerned from the seductive detail literature, including the contributions to this Special Issue. For one, relevance (or importance), which is pivotal to the seductive detail effect, is unquestionably not a solitary construct. There are multiple forms of relevance that have been addressed in association with seductive details: personal, structural, instructional, and task relevant. Two of those forms, instructional and task, are especially prominent in this Special Issue. For another, as Schraw et al. ([42]) suggested, there is no reason to assume that these forms are activated in isolation during text‐based or multimedia learning or that their interactions do not confound how seductive details function.

In addition to relevance, the other ingredient needed to concoct the seductive detail effect is interest. As with relevance, interest is a multidimensional construct. The more the complex nature of interest is understood, the more the ambiguity surrounding whether seductive details might facilitate or disrupt learning can be reduced. However, before analyzing what the contributors to the Special Issue have earmarked as "seductive details," let me put the second salient attribute of these textual elements, interest, in perspective.

As with relevance, there are varied orientations toward interest manifested in the literature. As was true for relevance, Dewey ([8], [9]) was concerned with individual interest, or what he called "true" interest. This is one's personal identification with or investment in some object or experience, which is enduring. In contrast, there is situational interest (Hidi, [16]; Schiefele, [38]), which is engendered by characteristics of the object or experience and which is temporary or fleeting in nature. Although comprehension researchers have occasionally attempted to ascertain learners' individual interest in the topic or domain addressed (Alexander et al., [5]), it is situational interest that is most often targeted within the seductive detail research. In essence, what researchers are exploring are the effects of textual elements presumed to be high in situational interest but low in relevance on learning performance. The term "interestingness" is sometimes used to capture the quality of objects or experiences that draw individuals' attention or that make them so intriguing or memorable (Hidi, [16]).

Among the early interest researchers (Hidi et al., [19]; Wade et al., [45]), there was frequent acknowledgment of the work of Schank ([37]), an artificial intelligence researcher investigating natural language understanding and how the appearance of certain concepts set inference‐making loose in the system. What Schank determined was that disruptions in inference‐making could be expected with the appearance of certain concepts: power, sex, money (in large quantities), destruction, chaos, romance, and disease—universal sources of interest. He also found that unexpected events and personal relatedness when tied to one of the universals were power triggers of interest. Indeed, references to Horatio Nelson's affairs, Stephen Hawking's disease, or snakes eating live animals within expository or mixed texts operated as Schank predicted.

When I perused the information that the contributors to this Special Issue marked as seductive details, I found only one case that falls squarely within Schank's universals. For instance, Eitel et al. ([10]) adapted Mayer's ([29]) lightning passage focused on the formation of lightning by inserting a colorful beach picture and the following sentences: colored photograph of a beach together with the text "Every year approximately 150 Americans are killed by lightning. Swimmers are sitting ducks for lightning" (p. xx). As expected, unless students were forewarned about the seductive detail, they were less effective at recalling the critical information on lightning formation.

Beyond Schank's universals, other features of texts or tasks have been found to engender interest. For example, in her review of interest‐enhancing conditions found to promote text‐based learning, Hidi ([16]) discussed research where surprising information, goal‐directed activities, and human interest factors provoked readers' interest and influenced recall (Hidi & Baird, [17], [18]), as did novelty and intense activities (Anderson, Shirey, Wilson, & Fielding, [6]), conflict, arousal, and curiosity (Berlyne, [7]). Although Hidi sought to make a case for the merits of interest within texts, the fact remains that the evidence within the multimedia literature speaks more to the negative effects of interest‐enhancing content (Harp & Mayer, [15]).

Yet Schraw ([40]) was among those who offered a plausible explanation for the mixed outcomes related to seductive details. What Schraw hypothesized was that there are qualitatively different kinds of seductive details and that those differences could influence whether their effects on comprehension proved detrimental or not. To test these hypotheses, Schraw ran three experiments using the Horatio Nelson text from the Wade et al. ([47]) study. The purpose was first to determine if there were, in fact, two types of seductive detail: those that were interesting on their own and those that drew their interest from the textual content (Exp. 1). Then he set out to determine whether reading time and recall would differ for these content‐independent and content‐dependent seductive details (Exp. 2). Finally, he wanted to test whether seductive details would interfere with recall of the text as a whole or the main ideas (Exp. 3).

What Schraw concluded from these experiments was that some seductive details are independently interesting within any textual content or context whereas other "seductions" require the framing afforded by the text. Both types were more interesting than the main ideas. Also, Schraw determined that content‐dependent seductive details required more processing time than did the content‐independent ones, but neither affected recall of the main ideas or surrounding content. Interestingly, the forms of seductive details that were content independent and more memorable corresponded to the universal interests outlined by Schank ([37]). This suggests that the type of interest reflected in an irrelevant detail may have more to do with its seductiveness than has been recognized.

So how do the seductive details identified by the contributors to this Special Issue stack up against Schraw's ([40]) content‐dependent to content‐independent designations? From what the authors labeled as seductive details, pictures, music, photographs, numeric, or graphic elements in their contributions, it would seem that few would qualify as content independent. Abercrombie et al. ([1]) even acknowledged that fact when they described their "seductive" information on student and teacher ethnicity and culture and on students' poverty status embedded in their instructional cases. Their caveat was that this added information may not appear particularly interesting outside the context of the case. Also, Tsai et al. ([44]) explored the effects of seductive static or dynamic illustrations embedded in PowerPoint slides about infant motor development on students' attention allocation and learning. It would seem that those illustrations were content dependent, and it was unclear how "interesting" they were perceived to be even within content. That is to say, to be consistent with the conceptualization of a seductive detail (Garner et al., [12]), such insertions must be not only irrelevant (which seems questionable in this instance) but also highly interesting (which is also doubtful).

As has been true since the 1980s, the contributions of this Special Issue paint a mixed portrait of the seductive detail effect. In certain cases, the hypothesized effects of what the authors identified as "seductive" on learning or task performance did, in fact, manifest (Abercrombie et al., [1]; Eitel et al., [10]). Yet in other cases, learning or recall of targeted content was not adversely affected (Ketzer‐Nöltge et al., [23]; Kühl et al., [25]; McCrudden, [32]). Has the research community not become far wiser about why, when, or for whom seductive elements do seduce? As an optimist, I believe we actually know more about the art and science of seduction within instructional materials than we realize.

To make that point, let me assume the role of provocateur, putting forward several polemic questions derived not only from my analysis of the contributions populating this Special Issue and my long history with seductive detail research in text comprehension but also from the insights of others, as well (Alexander & Jetton, [4]; Goetz & Sadoski, [13]; Hidi, [16]; Schraw, [40], Schraw & Lehman, [41]).

One of the criticisms that Goetz and Sadoski ([13]) had of the seductive detail literature was that what researchers were calling "seductive details" did not seem to meet the standards set for these high interest/low importance elements. Although the examples that Goetz and Sadoski used to make their cases were effectively countered by Schraw ([40]), the central question they raised is still quite relevant, as it pertains to the contributions in this Special Issue. Put another way, if there are truly no textual or visual elements in the studies described that can be judged as highly interesting but low in relevance or importance, then there can be no seductive detail effect.

On the basis of my judgment (and allowing for others to disagree), I found several cases where at least one of the two conditions was highly questionable. For instance, there were several studies where the learners were expected to derive what mode of relevance the researchers had in mind, or where the researchers themselves acknowledged that there was likely some relevance to the textual or visual segment they had marked as "seductive" (Strobel, Grund, & Lindner, [43]). There were other situations where the experimental materials contained very limited information, such as a few words or pictures on a PowerPoint slide (Tsai et al., [44]) or limited information in the mathematics word problem (Jarosz & Jaeger, [21]). When there is so little content with which to deal, there is good reason to assume that the learners attempting to learn from those materials would struggle to ascertain either the propositional structure being represented or the learning objective.

From the standpoint of interest, there were also text segments or visual elements added within several of the studies that I found only marginally interesting. I could not see why learners should be attracted or intrigued. In several cases, I was left questioning how the authors distinguished between seductive details and other forms of attentional distractors. In the Lehmann, Hamm, and Seufert ([28]) study, for example, where the research centered on the interplay of background music and extroversion, I struggled to understand why background music was not simply an external distraction.

In the aforementioned cases, the attempt at seduction might be better described as only a textual or visual "tease" or as something peripheral enough to the focal activity to be overlooked or ignored. For those contributors who have taken a more creative or more relaxed view of seductive details, I would suggest that even more time be spent trying out their seductive moves on relevant learner samples before they undertake future studies. Perhaps applying Schraw's ([40]) recommendation, it would be worthwhile to ascertain the degree to which the textual or visual element in question represents context‐independent interest before embedding it within the experimental materials. Further, it might be worthwhile to ensure that the form of relevance that is driving the investigation is made evident in the task descriptions or relevance cues that are provided. By disambiguating the researchers' relevance focus—without simply pointing out the seductive details to be ignored—the examination of seductive details may have more to say to learning as it unfolds in actual academic contexts.

For more than three decades, there have been thoughtful reviews and empirical studies attempting to establish the "boundary" conditions related to seductive detail effects (Hidi, [16]; Lehman, Schraw, McCrudden, & Hartley, [27]; Jetton & Alexander, [22]; Rey, [36]). The fact that the current Special Issue is a collection of studies that once again culminates in mixed results raises the question as to whether those engaging in this research took the recommendations of these past reviews to heart or if there are additional contextual complications that must now be considered.

One factor that resonated with me during the early days of seductive detail research was the character of the texts per se. Whether it was Garner et al.'s ([12]) insect text or Mayer's (Harp & Mayer, [14]) lightning passage, these experimental materials were highly stylized and very brief. Clearly, they were not written to be particularly cohesive but, rather, maximally informative to their guiding research questions. Although those texts served important functions at that point in the research, they have little bearing on what is being read currently. Why does the character of these early texts matter in terms of understanding the potential effects of seductive details? Imagine a flower growing in the desert versus one growing in a garden. When a colorful or surprising object is set against an otherwise bland backdrop, it is far more likely to grab attention than if it were placed within an appealing vista. That is what I find with some of the instructional materials that are part of the seductive detail literature. Regrettably, those materials metaphorically have more in common with a desert than has the flower garden. That starkness may simply stifle students' engagement rather than compel them to pay attention to what the authors regard as the most important structurally or instructionally.

Of course, the character of the seductive details matters as well. The research done by text researchers like Wade et al. ([47]) and others (Alexander et al., [5], Garner et al., [11]) lent credence to Schank's universal. Throw in information (relevant or not) on sex, death, and big money and you can be assured that it will attract readers' or listeners' attention. But there are other likely candidates for this attention‐grabbing phenomenon, such as an unexpected or surprising occurrence, incongruity, conflict, uncertainty, and human interest (Berlyne, [7]; Hidi, [16]; Schank, [37]). Here again, these latter candidates may or may not rise to the level of a seductive detail depending on where and how they are positioned within texts or multimedia documents.

One assumption that is woven throughout much of the literature and echoed in this Special Issue is that seductive details are by default undesirable, even if the effects cannot be consistently documented. I certainly do not advocate "sugarcoating" (Dewey, [8]) important content that may be perceived as abstract, complex, and unfamiliar so that it seems more palatable to learners. Nor do I regard it as wise to sprinkle salacious, provocative, or enticing but tangential information to academic texts.

Yet I also believe that seductive details—although quite alluring—likely serve only as harmless diversions or momentary flings to those who are highly competent readers or listeners, or those who are well informed about the topic or domain at hand. In essence, such very capable or very knowledgeable individuals know when they are being seduced, and although they may enjoy the diversion, they will not fall prey to its effect. Instead, these more competent individuals remain in control of their learning and respond accordingly (Alexander & Jetton, [4]; Jetton & Alexander, [22]). It is not just a matter of cognitive load and not just about overloading working memory. It is also that more competent and knowledgeable readers and listeners have a greater sense of what constitutes relevant and irrelevant content (Alexander & Jetton, [4]). Also, their richer topic or domain knowledge brings with it more individual interest or personal investment in what is being discussed, and a greater capacity and willingness to process texts at a deeper level, whether they contain enticing textual or visual tidbits or not (Alexander, [2], [3]). Of course, for those learners who are more competent and knowledge text processors, the reasons for engaging with texts can be quite personal and their bases for judging what is relevant and interesting more individually determined (Alexander & Jetton, [4]; Dewey, [9]; Hidi & Renninger, [20]).

Let me bring this consideration of my "discernments" to a close with one final and continually nagging concern I have about how to deal with the issue of seductive details. As I have intimated, I believe that seduction with regard to instructional materials, even within highly procedural exposition, may be an inevitability. Moreover, as one moves away from purely expository texts—be they multimedia, multimodal—into mixed texts or narratives, the pull of seductive details may be much less of a concern. For instance, Schraw's ([40]) findings regarding content‐dependent versus content‐independent seductive details and his finding of no negative effects on recall of main points were based on the Horatio Nelson text used in the Wade et al. ([47]) study. This Nelson text, an engaging biographical piece, is characteristic of texts that mix narrative and exposition. As suggested, such mixed texts, which may mitigate the negative effects of seductive details, stand in sharp contrast to some materials that populate the seductive detail literature.

Yet in those cases where salacious, provocative, or enticing but tangential information has been added via text, visuals, or audiovisuals, the issue remains as to how to deal with their potentially detrimental effects on students' learning of content that is structurally or instructionally important. It would seem that one simple response would be to purge any such enticements from materials—as Sgt. Friday on the old Dragnet show of my childhood would say, "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts." But what kind of solution is that? Sadly, the problem is that far too much of the exposition students are required to read is already dry, boring, and abstract (Hidi, [16]). What does it serve to make that exposition even more sterile? Such a solution would possibly create even more problems in drawing students into academic texts and deepening their engagement and increasing the attention they allot to any academic reading task.

Let me offer an alternative that may deviate somewhat from the principles of multimedia learning that my dear colleague Mayer ([30]) has posed, but that may lessen the seductive effect of unnecessary details of little or no importance to the learning objective or the task. Specifically, why not write exposition that is highly cohesive and linguistically appealing—exposition for which the provocative or enticing content is actually well linked to the learning objective or instructional task. In some ways, this recommendation brings us full circle to the writings of Dewey ([9]), who was partly responsible for instigating this line of research for a number of text comprehension researchers like me.

To craft a piece of exposition of the quality that I am describing requires a deep understanding and passion for topic and domain. What it demands is knowing enough about and being personally interested enough in the subject matter to find the beauty in what others might regard as a dry, highly abstract, or terribly boring topic. It is understanding the interestingness of that topic to the point that sugarcoating it is not required. There is no need to dress up the content in order to make it more palatable, because the interestingness is integral. If writers of exposition or even mixed texts came to their tasks with that understanding (and hopefully some writing ability), then maybe we could finally put our concerns about seductive details to rest.

I also hope that as this research progresses, it moves beyond the highly contrived methods and materials that are so distant from how and what students read today. The lessons learned over these past three decades need to have more direct relevance to typical learners' reading of typical texts under typical conditions. Of course, this will not be easy—but it is important and interesting.

I want to thank the editors of this Special Issue for inviting me to offer my thoughts on this thought‐provoking collection of articles. It brought back memories of my work in this area and even fonder memories of dear colleagues and friends who are no longer with us—Ruth Garner, Suzanne Wade, and Gregory Schraw. Those three amazing scholars were important not only to this line of inquiry but also to me at a deep, personal level.