Knowledge, interest, and narrative writing.

Abstract

One-hundred-six 9th graders and 203 undergraduates wrote a story about baseball for 25 min and then completed a 39-item multiple-choice test of baseball topic knowledge. Students also answered 6 questions about their individual interest in baseball. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that knowledge and interest tests measured different constructs. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed Grade X Interest and Gender X Interest interactions on thematic maturity. Differences favoring undergraduates at low levels of interest disappeared at higher levels of interest, and differences favoring male students at low levels of interest disappeared at higher levels of interest. Topic knowledge predicted thematic maturity and was a better predictor of the interestingness of students' written texts than was individual interest. Implications for the assignment of student writing topics are discussed.

Long-term working memory in text production

“…Domain knowledge, on the other hand, resulted in differences in the degree to which writers incorporated game-relevant propositions into the narrative accounts of a half-inning of baseball (Benton et al, 1995;Voss et al, 1980). A growing body of evidence suggests that both reading and writing skills are dependent on both verbal ability and domain-specific knowledge (Adams, Bell, & Perfetti, 1995;Benton et al, 1995;McCutchen, 1986;Singer & Ritchot, 1996). Kintsch's (1988) construction-integration model has been chiefly applied to reading, but it is also relevant to text production (Nicolich, 1997).…”

“…Participants wrote a narrative account of a half-inning of a baseball game. The propositions expressed were categorized according to whether they were game actions, relevant-nongameactions, or irrelevant-nongame actions, as in previous work (Benton et al, 1995;Voss et al, 1980). It was anticipated that a high degree of domain knowledge would increase the proportion of game-relevant actions.…”

“…The propositional content of the narrative texts was analyzed using the procedure described by Benton et al (1995). As in the Voss et al (1980) analysis, the ideas expressed in the text were categorized as game actions, relevant-nongame actions, and irrelevant-nongame actions.…”

“…The domain-knowledge effects are well established for text comprehension, but in production the evidence is less compelling (Benton, Corkill, Sharp, Downey, & Khramtsova, 1995;Rowan, 1990). For instance, Benton et al found that baseball knowledge only weakly correlated with the number of game actions (r 5 .24) and relevant-nongame actions (r 5 .11) included in written stories.…”

Antecedents of Engagement in Community-Based Crowdsourcing

“…Studies show that topical interest has a stronger effect on the application and transfer of knowledge and on engagement towards the topic rather than on simple activities like recognition of facts [69]. Benton et al [8] found that individuals who were interested in the topic wrote better quality essays, both in terms of relevant information included and the thematic complexity of the sentences. Tobias and Everson [76] discovered that interest in the topic was positively related to metacognition (the ability to understand and monitor one's cognitive processes).…”