The effects of domain knowledge on metacomprehension accuracy

Abstract

In the present research, we examined the relationship between readers' domain knowledge and their ability to judge their comprehension of novel domain-related material. Participants with varying degrees of baseball knowledge read five texts on baseball-related topics and five texts on non-baseball-related topics, predicted their performance, and completed tests for each text. Baseball knowledge was positively related to absolute accuracy within the baseball domain but was unrelated to relative accuracy within the baseball domain. Also, the readers showed a general underconfidence bias, but the bias was less extreme for higher knowledge readers. The results challenge common assumptions that experts' metacognitive judgments are less accurate than novices'. Results involving topic familiarity ratings and a no-reading control group suggest that higher knowledge readers are not more likely to ignore text-specific cues in favor of a domain familiarity heuristic, but they do appear to make more effective use of domain familiarity in predicting absolute performance levels.

How readers experience characters’ decisions

“…With longer texts, we suggest that these types of individual differences will accumulate to have an even greater impact. As we noted in the introduction, prior research has acknowledged the role of expertise in generating divergent narrative experiences (Fincher-Kiefer et al, 1988;Griffin et al, 2009;Spilich et al, 1979). However, our present experiments suggest that virtually every aspect of a narrative provides a context for individual responses that are not related to domain expertise.…”

“…Gerrig (2002, 2006) expected that the majority of readers would respond with the same mental preferences (an expectation that was supported by norming data). However, we expect that readers will demonstrate more variability in their responses to the & Wiley, 2009;Spilich, Vesonder, Chiesi, & Voss, 1979). We would expect that readers with considerable blackjack knowledge would encode more definitive responses with respect to Bobby's decision (i.e., they would have stronger opinions about what constitutes a good or bad decision).…”

Unskilled and unaware in the classroom: College students’ desired grades predict their biased grade predictions

“…For example, adults overestimate their skills and performance on tasks related to reasoning, humor, and grammar (Kruger & Dunning, 1999); children overestimate their ability to remember pictures (Lipko, Dunlosky, & Merriman, 2009) and to perform physical tasks (Schneider, 1998); and consumers overestimate how easy it will be to learn to use a new product (Billeter, Kalra, & Loewenstein, 2011). Most relevant to the present research, students often overestimate how well they will perform on an upcoming test of their learning (e.g., Hacker, Bol, & Bahbahani, 2008;Miller & Geraci, 2011a, b; but see Griffin, Jee, & Wiley, 2009;Shanks & Serra, 2014), which can impair their study behaviors (Metcalfe & Finn, 2008). The reasons for such overconfidence, however, are not yet well understood.…”

“…This pattern is often referred to as Bunskilled and unaware,^because it seems that the lowest-performing people in a domain not only lack the abilities or knowledge to perform well in that domain, but also lack metacognitive awareness of their deficits (e.g., Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, & Kruger, 2003;Grimes, 2002;Kruger & Dunning, 1999; but see Griffin et al, 2009;Miller & Geraci, 2011b;Shanks & Serra, 2014). In formal-education settings, this pattern can be especially problematic.…”

Elementary school experience with comprehension testing may influence metacomprehension accuracy among seventh and eighth graders.

“…After reading, a person is asked to judge his or her comprehension of a text. According to the cue-utilization framework, the metacomprehension judgment may be based on a number of cues, such as how easily the text was processed during reading (Dunlosky & Rawson, 2005;Rawson & Dunlosky, 2002), how successfully the material had been retrieved at the time of the judgment (Baker & Dunlosky, 2006;Benjamin, Bjork, & Schwartz, 1998;Morris, 1990), the familiarity with the domain of the text (Glenberg & Epstein, 1987;Glenberg, Sanocki, Epstein & Morris, 1987;Griffin, Jee & Wiley, 2009;Maki & Serra, 1992), or global characteristics of texts such as length or difficulty (Weaver & Bryant, 1995). Metacomprehension accuracy will tend to increase as the cues that are used as a basis for comprehension judgments more highly correlate with performance on a test of comprehension (for empirical evidence linking metacomprehension accuracy and judgment cue basis, see Thiede, Griffin, Wiley, & Anderson, 2010).…”