Domain-specific knowledge and memory performance: A comparison of high- and low-aptitude children.

Abstract

Two studies compared memory performance and text comprehension of groups that were equivalent on domain-specific knowledge but differed in overall aptitude, to investigate whether prior knowledge about a particular domain or overall aptitude level was more important when the task was to acquire and use new information in the domain of interest. Both studies dealt with third-, fifuV, and seventh-grade soccer experts' and novices' memory and comprehension of a story dealing with a soccer game. Several measures of memory performance, memory monitoring, and text comprehension were used. Levels of soccer knowledge and of overall aptitude were varied in a factorial design. Neither study detected significant differences between high-aptitude and low-aptitude experts, regardless of their ages. Low aptitude experts outperformed high-aptitude novices on all memory and comprehension measures. The results indicate that domain-specific knowledge can compensate for low overall aptitude on domain-related cognitive tasks.

Memory recall in a process control system: a measure of expertise and display effectiveness

“…Recht & Leslie, 1988;Schneider, Korkel, & Weinert, 1989; and the review in Vicente, 1988), thereby lending support for applying the recall method in this manner. Second, if such a result is obtained with theoretical experts as subjects, then one would need to see if the same pattern of results is obtained with experienced operators who are typically not theoretical experts.…”

Reading for Understanding: How Performance Moderators and Scenarios Impact Assessment Design

“…Rather than treating background knowledge solely as a construct-irrelevant nuisance, it also can be seen as an opportunity to improve the interpretation of reading scores and to model good practice. Like key theories of reading (e.g., construction-integration [Kintsch, 1998] (Adams, Bell, & Perfetti, 1995;Alexander, Sperl, Buehl, & Chiu, 2004;Cromley & Azevedo, 2007;Dochy, Segers, & Buehl, 1999;Fincher-Kiefer, Post, Greene, & Voss, 1988;Hambrick & Engle, 2002;McNamara, 1997McNamara, , 2001McNamara, de Vega, & O'Reilly, 2007;McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996;Murphy & Alexander, 2002;O'Reilly & McNamara, 2007a, 2007bOzuru, Best, Bell, Witherspoon, & McNamara, 2007;Ozuru, Dempsey, & McNamara, 2009;Recht & Leslie, 1988;Schneider, Körkel, & Weinert, 1989;Shapiro, 2004;Spilich, Vesonder, Chiesi, & Voss, 1979;Thompson & Zamboanga, 2004;van den Broek, 2012;Voss & Silfies, 1996;Walker, 1987). While background knowledge can facilitate comprehension, in some cases background knowledge can actually interfere with reading comprehension when knowledge is irrelevant or violated by the text (Kucer, 2011).…”

The Relation of Moral Judgment Development and Educational Experience to Recall of Moral Narratives and Expository Texts

“…Researchers have explained the processes that underlie the relation between text comprehension and domain knowledge as a function of mental schemas and have tested these processes through examination of readers' recall of domainspecific texts (e.g., Arbuckle, Vanderleck, Harsany, & Lapidus, 1990;Schneider, Körkel, & Weinert, 1989). The findings of these studies suggest that high-knowledge readers achieve a deeper level of understanding than do low-knowledge readers, enabling them to construct an appropriate mental model that allows them to correctly elaborate on the text.…”