Date of Award:
5-1992
Document Type:
Dissertation
Degree Name:
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department:
Psychology
Committee Chair(s)
Lani M. Van Dusen
Committee
Lani M. Van Dusen
Committee
Blaine Worthen
Committee
Karl White
Committee
Donald Sisson
Committee
Kay Camperell
Abstract
A series of six experiments investigated the effect of text-provided elaborations and prior knowledge on memory for text. In all experiments, subjects read 28 episodes, half of which were associated with well-known individuals, and the other half were associated with unknown individuals. In Experiment 1, text-provided elaborations enhanced recall only when the reader did not possess a high level of prior knowledge. The findings from Experiment 1 were hypothesized to be the result of readers generating relevant elaborations during text comprehension. Experiment 2 supported this hypothesis by providing evidence of self-generated elaborations. Experiment 3 provided evidence that this generation process occurred "on-line." The results from Experiments 4 and 5 extended these findings by showing that readers with high prior knowledge automatically generate causally relevant elaborations when the sentences have a low relation. The findings of Experiment 6 suggest that distinctive text-provided elaborations are more effective than normal text-provided elaborations only when readers have high prior knowledge.
Checksum
39841e6df2d22c1f7167a8498d135da7
Recommended Citation
Kim, Sung-il, "The Role of Prior Knowledge and Elaboration in Text Comprehension and Memory: A Comparison of Self-Generated Elaboration versus Text-Provided Elaboration" (1992). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023. 6040.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/6040
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