A study investigated the effect of underlining, naturally occurring prior knowledge, induced prior knowledge, and placement order of text information on students' immediate and delayed recall of unfamiliar text. Two reading passages of approximately 800 words were generated on the topic of computers, each with sections of information judged familiar and unfamiliar to students. Subjects from a pool of 400 grade 8 students were assigned to treatment conditions of prior knowledge inducement or no-inducement and underlining or no-underlining. Before reading the passages on computers, the induced prior knowledge group was directed to take notes during a lecture on computers, while the no-induced prior knowledge group took notes on an unrelated lecture. Immediately following and one week after reading the passage, students were administered open ended and multiple choice questions. Test results from 108 subjects in the underlining and nonunderlining groups were compared and underlining analysis was done on 66 subjects. Results showed no significant differences between the underlining and no-underlining groups on any of the measures. The absence of significant results supports the notion that process by which prior knowledge, text, and text processing strategies interact and affect the learning of new information from text is indeed complex and worthy of continued scrutiny. (HTH)