On the role of prior knowledge and task demands in the processing of text

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.…”

“…Readers who are knowledgeable about the game of blackjack, for instance, will likely respond differently to Bobby's situation than readers who are unfamiliar with the game. This prediction follows from past research that has documented the impact of domain knowledge-for example, by contrasting experts and novices-on readers' responses to texts (e.g., Fincher-Kiefer, Post, Greene, & Voss, 1988;Griffin, Jee, 753 © 2010 The Psychonomic Society, Inc.…”

Expertise as mental set: The effects of domain knowledge in creative problem solving

“…To begin with, the critical variable is a within-subjects difference scorethat is, high-knowledge subjects perform as well as lowknowledge subjects on neutral trials but less well on the misleading trials. Second, previous studies using mediansplit procedures on the same Baseball Knowledge Questionnaire have looked directly at measures of ability and found no differences between high-and low-knowledge groups (see, e.g., Fincher-Kiefer, Post, Greene, & Voss, 1988;Spilich et aI., 1979).…”

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).…”