To provide a test of the notion that criterial task knowledge facilitates learning and, consequently, performance in studying, a study examined the effects of an explicit prereading task directive and an explicit postreading criterion on the studying behaviors of 40 college undergraduates. After presentation of a prereading task directive prepared in two forms (with and without an explicit statement of question-relevant information), the subjects studied a 4,000 word article on the life of an Irish farmer and completed one of two forms of a question-answering task. Noncriterion task subjects were asked only to list the farmer's hardships and improvements, while subjects in the postreading criterion treatment group were told to list eight hardships and eight improvements. Subjects were also asked to indicate the strategies they employed to learn the material and were given the option of redoing selected questions. The results indicated strong, empirical support for the notion that the more explicit the knowledge of performance expectations, the greater the learner's ability to meet those expectations. The effect for the prereading directive was evident in the large number of directed students who chose to redo selected questions. Finally, those subjects who used more meaning-oriented than text-explicit strategies significantly outperformed others on the question answering task. (FL)