A study was designed to determine whether scores for general knowledge, specific knowledge, and general interest on a topic could be used as predictors of children's listening comprehension. Baseball and dolls were chosen as the topics because their stereotypic nature would allow the data to be generalized across the subject population. Data were collected on 27 first grade children during three sessions. Topical interests and general topical knowledge were measured during the first session, pretests on the specific stories during the second session, and comprehension posttests (after the stories were read aloud to the students) during the third session. Both general topical knowledge and specific topical knowledge of dolls significantly predicted doll story comprehension scores. In contrast, only general topical knowledge of baseball was significantly related to students' comprehension scores for the baseball story. High interest in a topic did not necessarily entail high general knowledge about the topic. Children's correct responses to story-specific questions about dolls and baseball significantly predicted doll story but not baseball story posttest scores. (RL)