The purposes of this study were to test for both forward and backward effects of inserted questions in prose material, and to determine the conditions under which each in most effective. The conditions examined were the relationship between the inserted questions and the subsequent questions on which learning facilitation was revealed, and the textual distance of the material tested from the inserted questions. Subjects for the experiment were 140 undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to one of five treatment groups: inserted questions (EQ) at three varying positions in the reading material (E1, E2, E3), no inserted questions (C), and inserted questions irrelevant to the preceding material (CQ). The treatments used formed two seperate studies. Groups E1, C, and CQ comprised one study (A) and groups E2 and E3 the other (B). The results from study A indicated no significant difference between C and CQ. Thus, the effect of increased attentiveness occurs only with the insertion of text related questions. In study B the results indicated that group E3 was significantly superior on matched items, regardless of distance from the inserted question, but there was no significant difference on unmatched items. (WR)