Two hypotheses, the cognitive capacity hypothesis and the selective attention hypothesis, try to account for the facilitation effects of prior knowledge activation. They appear to be mutually exclusive since they predict different recall patterns as a result of prior knowledge activation. This study was designed to determine whether the two…

Reading comprehension is much more than a decoding of the printed words on the page; it is, rather, a complex interaction between readers and their personal past experiences as they relate to the text. A connection between the text and past experiences of the readers can stimulate expectations about the text. Facilitating these links presupposes a…

A study examined the influence of prior knowledge on the quality of responses in three process-approach tasks: writing, conferencing, and revising. Subjects, 20 high-knowledge and 20 low-knowledge fourth grade students, wrote stories about a baseball game. Propositional text bases of first and second drafts were analyzed according to six…

A study investigated the relationship between prior knowledge, age, instruction, and the relative difficulty and importance of a text in the reading processes and knowledge acquisition of elementary school children in Belgium. Two groups of 42 students (10 and 12 year olds) were given a knowledge questionnaire two months prior to the experimental…

Australia's tertiary institutions and licensing authorities that control the right to work in various trades and professions have largely ignored the need for procedures and processes to recognize formally the knowledge that people gain in their life experiences. For this reason, the issue of assessing adult learners' life experiences for the…

Australia's tertiary institutions and licensing authorities that control the right to work in various trades and professions have largely ignored the need for procedures and processes to recognize formally the knowledge that people gain in their life experiences. For this reason, the issue of assessing adult learners' life experiences for the…

A study examined (1) relationships between background knowledge and reading passage comprehension, (2) the reliability of a passage-specific background knowledge measure used as the knowledge criterion, (3) the effect of a prereading language and concept organizer activity on available background knowledge, and (4) the effect of that prereading…

A study investigated the book handling and print concepts knowledge of 37 preschool children in a college day-care center. Subjects ranged in age from 2 to 5 years. As part of their normal day, the subjects were taken aside and a story was read to them. They were then asked questions about the physical make-up of the book, rules and concepts of…

To examine the effects of general and specific comprehension ability of a target reading passage and prior knowledge of the subject of the passage, a study examined 182 sixth graders from two central Illinois rural and urban communities. Subjects were given a fifth-grade passage (a 500-word fictional narrative description of the Yanomamo tribe of…

This bulletin is the sixth in a series that provides information on a collaborative project known as MainFrame to develop youth training programs in Great Britain. It describes the assessment procedures used in the youth training programs and examines project progress toward its main objective--the development of a unit credit transfer system--and…

A study was conducted to determine if instruction in schematic aspects of narratives would enhance children's knowledge of story constituents and their interrelationships and to assess the effect of instruction in narrative schema on the reading comprehension of average and below average readers. Subjects were 20 fourth grade students who had been…

The Regents External Degrees program to earn a degree without attending college, and the College Proficiency Examinations to validate knowledge gained outside of the formal college classroom are described. The programs are administered by the University of the State of New York, which has no campus or courses, but accepts credits from accredited…

A study guide to assist a candidate preparing to take the New York State College Proficiency and Regents External Degree Examinations is presented. This booklet offers suggestions on how to successfully complete an independent study project learning to do tasks normally performed by a teacher. The guide includes; preparing for independent study,…

Research literature shows that people with access to attitude-relevant information in memory are able to draw on relevant beliefs and prior experiences when analyzing a persuasive message. This suggests that people who can retrieve little attitude-relevant information should be less able to engage in systematic processing. Two experiments were…

This guide is designed to help the counselor work with adult students who cannot attend the 45-hour course on portfolio development and must prepare a portfolio within a program of independent studies. Chapter I gives an overview of the place that andragogical counselors occupy within the academic structure, their educational background, and some…