We investigated how college students answer questions
about the content of illustrated expository text. Subjects
studied illustrated texts describing causal event chains that
unfold during the operation of everyday machines.
Subjects subsequently provided written answers to
questions about events occurring in each machine. Four
types of questions were asked: why did event X occur?.
how did X occur?, what are the consequences pf X
occurring?, and what if X didn't occur?. In our analysis of
the answer protocols, we adopted the theoretical framework
of the QUES T model of human question answering
(Graesser & Franklin, 1990). The present study supported
predictions generated from three components of the QUEST
model: question categorization, utilization of information
sources, and convergence principles. Our results also
revealed two novel findings. First, subjects had a bias
toward sampling information from the text more than from
the picture. Second, subjects tended to sample infontiation
depicted in both the text and the picture
