The role of prior knowledge and elaboration in text comprehension and memory: a comparison of self-generated elaboration and text-provided elaboration.
Four experiments investigated the interactive effect of text-provided elaborations and prior knowledge on text comprehension and memory. Subjects read 28 episodes, half of which were associated with well-known people and the other half with unknown people. In Experiment 1, text-provided elaborations enhanced recall only when the reader did not have a high level of prior knowledge. The findings from Experiment 1 were hypothesized to be the result of readers generating relevant elaborations during text comprehension. Experiment 2 supported this hypothesis by providing evidence of self-generated elaborations. The results from Experiments 3 and 4 extended these findings by showing that readers with high prior knowledge automatically generate causally relevant elaborations when the sentences have a low relation.
Kim
S I
SI
Kwangwoon University.
Van Dusen
L M
LM
D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012153:Retention, Psychology