Expertise, Aptitude, and Strategic Remembering

Abstract

, 461-473. Second-and fourth-grade children were classified according to their knowledge of soccer (experts vs. novices) and IQ (high vs. low), and given 2 sort-recall tasks. One task included items related to the game of soccer and the other included items from familiar natural language categories. Previous research has shown that expertise in a snbject can compensate for low levels of performance on text comprehension tasks. Our results, the flrst examing the effects of both expertise and intelligence on a strategic memory task, were that soccer expert children recalled more items on the soccer list bnt not on the nonsoccer list than soccer novice children. However, soccer expertise did not modify a significant effect of IQ level, with high-IQ children recalling more than low-IQ children for all contrasts. Interest in soccer was found to be related to expertise but did not contribute to differences in memory performance. The results demonstrate that the knowledge base plays an important role in children's memory, but that domain knowledge cannot fully eliminate the effects of IQ on sort-recall tasks using domain-related materials. That is, although rich domain knowledge seemed to compensate for low aptitude, in that low-aptitude experts performed at the level of high-aptitude novices, its effects were not strong enough to eliminate performance differences between highand low-aptitude soccer experts.

Domain-specific knowledge and memory performance in children

“…In a recent study on the impact of domain-specific knowledge on performance in a sort-recall task (Schneider and Bjorklund, 1992), we found that soccer experts recalled more than soccer novices when the task was to remember a list of soccer-related pictures, but that intelligence had an independent effect. That is, when the task was to use organizational strategies in order to learn and remember semantically clusterable materials, the more intelligent soccer experts outperformed the less intelligent experts, and the more intelligent novices outperformed the less intelligent novices.…”

Prior knowledge determines interest in learning in physical education: A structural growth model perspective

“…Alexander et al (1994) once described the linear interest-knowledge relationship: the relationship is weak in students with low and intermediate levels of knowledge and is becoming stronger with knowledge growth and is stronger in knowledgeable students. Studies conducted on various populations and domains have confirmed this relationship (see Carnine and Carnine, 2004, Morris et al, 1985, Schneider and Bjorklund, 1992, Willingham, 2007.…”

Processing of Unjust and Just Information: Interpretation and Memory Performance Related to Dispositional Victim Sensitivity

“…This finding is consistent with an increased elaboration of injustice and justice concepts among victim‐sensitive persons. Unjust and just information can be better encoded into an elaborate pertinent memory structure so that retrieval is facilitated (Anderson, ; Schneider & Bjorklund, ).…”

“…On the other hand, a more elaborate knowledge structure in the domain of injustice should enhance the encoding of new pertinent information so that later retrieval is facilitated (Anderson, ; Schneider & Bjorklund, ). In line with this assumption, studies have shown that persons high in justice sensitivity display more accurate memory performance for unjust but not for neutral information in newspaper articles compared with persons low in justice sensitivity (Baumert et al, ).…”