Taking a philosophical approach based on what Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes said about knowledge, this paper addresses some of the murkiness in the conceptual space surrounding the issue of whether prior knowledge does or does not facilitate text comprehension. Specifically, the paper first develops a non-exhaustive typology of cases in which…

Presents a refined form of a personal theory of learning that examines two distinct parts of the complex interaction between a learner's internal mental structures and his or her world of experience. (Author/MKR)

The reasoning of caregivers is discussed in the context of preventing childhood accidents. This reasoning process, which uses knowledge about children's behavior in an environment, leads to appropriate preventive actions on the part of the caregiver. Illustrative examples of parents interacting with children are presented. (VM)

Discusses what is meant by meaningful learning, the conditions necessary for meaningful learning to occur, the importance of vocabulary instruction to comprehension, and how to insure that vocabulary instruction is meaningful. (HOD)

A dominant theme in cognitive psychology is that prior knowledge in long-term memory has a strong influence on an individual's cognitive processing. Citing numerous memory studies with children, knowledge base effects are presented as part of a broader picture of memory development. Using the sort/recall procedure (asking subjects to group sets of…

Challenges the widely endorsed practice of activating relevant knowledge prior to reading. Outlines a perspectival (perspective-relative) view of reading and suggests that this view provides a means to make coherent sense of interpretations. Concludes that having specific knowledge is not the main desideratum in interpreting texts--the main…

Speculates about reasons for the lack of use of concept mapping as an instructional strategy. Concludes that the two main barriers to its extensive adoption are the epistemological beliefs of classroom teachers and the underlying philosophy of the curriculum. (Contains 45 references.) (DDR)

Noting that conceptions of the cognitive representations and processes involved in discourse comprehension and production recently have undergone an important shift in orientation, this paper points out the importance of the shift to the conception of the nature of texts, of text understanding, and of cognitive processes in knowledge creation and…