Prior knowledge is often strongly related to students' learning. In the present research, we explored the relationship between prior knowledge and the accuracy of students' predictive monitoring judgments (judgments of learning; JOLs) and postdictive monitoring judgments (confidence judgments). In four experiments, students completed prior…

Self-derivation through integration is the process of integrating novel facts and producing new knowledge never directly taught. Knowledge integration has been studied with the presentation of two novel facts. However, in educational settings, individuals are required to integrate new information with prior knowledge learned days, months, or years…

Based on the classic distinction between semantic and episodic memory, people answer general-knowledge questions by querying their semantic memory. And yet, an appeal of trivia games is the variety of memory experiences they arouse--including the recollection of episodic details. We report the first in-depth exploration of the memory states that…

Previous research on multiple external representations (MER) indicates that sequencing representations (compared with presenting them as a whole) can, in some cases, increase conceptual understanding if there is interference between internal and external representations. We tested this mechanism by sequencing different combinations of scientific…

This study extends the evidence for implicit second language (L2) learning, which comes largely from (semi-)artificial language research, to German. Upper-intermediate L2 German learners were flooded with spoken exemplars of a difficult morphological structure, namely strong, vowel-changing verbs. Toward the end of exposure, the mandatory vowel…

In many situations, readers are asked to learn from multiple documents. Many studies have found that evaluating the trustworthiness and usefulness of document sources is an important skill in such learning situations. There has been, however, no direct evidence that attending to source information helps readers learn from and interpret a…

Examined influence of newly acquired information on 5- to 7-year-olds' memory and general representation of a personally experienced novel event. Found that advance information specific to the event led to better recall and better integration of the experience into a general event representation both soon after the event and 4 months later.…

In recent years, memory-based and explanation-based theories have dominated the discourse processing literature. Numerous studies have been conducted to show support for each of the two views. Most of these studies have manipulated factors in the episodic memory trace of texts, without a great deal of focus on how general world knowledge impacts…

Explored influence of changes in kindergartners' knowledge about a protagonist on earlier constructed memories of the story. Found that children's story recall was affected by their prior impressions. Following the second knowledge manipulation, children revised story reports consistent with newly acquired impressions, suggesting that they had…

In this study, 5- and 6-year-olds were read a story and asked to recall its details. Two independent factors-prestory knowledge and poststory suggestions-were crossed to examine the effects on children's story recall. The results indicated that prestory social knowledge about the story protagonist as well as academic knowledge relating to the…

A series of experiments investigated the role of prior knowledge in tasks involving the operation of equipment from written instructions. The experiments covered two situations. In the first, the prior knowledge was already possessed by the subjects before the experiments. The studies involved comprehension and memory of technical prose, expertise…

Studied prior knowledge as a mediator of effectiveness of the elaborative interrogation strategy for 50 male and 50 female undergraduates in a learning task. The elaborative interpretation group had significantly greater matching scores on an associative memory test for animal information than the control group only for familiar animals. (SLD)

Decoding, working memory, and domain-specific prior knowledge were studied as predictors of comprehension for 48 university undergraduate students after rewriting notes, rereading notes, or rereading a text. Working memory was most important for comprehension of text-implicit information, whereas knowledge was relatively more important for…

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…

The ability of 59 college students to access prior knowledge spontaneously in the form of a general procedure and a specific strategy was demonstrated using a training for transfer paradigm. Results are discussed in the context of transfer-appropriate processing and transfer-appropriate procedures models of learning and memory. (SLD)