Children's Learning from Informational Text: The Relationship between Prior Knowledge and Text Structure

Abstract

The focus of this study was on the role of prior knowledge and text structure in children's comprehension of informational text. It examined the effects of two levels of prior knowledge (High Prior Knowledge and Low Prior Knowledge) and two types of text structure (Attribution and Comparison) on the recall and question performance of fifth graders who were average readers. The 90 subjects in the study were selected on the basis of a pretest of their knowledge about two cities in their home state and two cities in another state. All selected subjects had high knowledge of the cities in their home state and low knowledge of the cities in the other state. Each subject read one of two passages (high prior knowledge passage or low prior knowledge passage) that was organized in one of two ways (attribution version or comparison version). Measures of written free recall and comprehension questions were the dependent variables. The measures were designed so that both qualitative and quantitative effects could be examined regarding children's recall and comprehension of three subsections of the text information. Prior knowledge had a greater effect on question performance than on recall performance. In addition, it only enhanced the recall of one section of the text information. There was a facilitative effect for the comparison structure on children's recall of one section of the text information. Finally, there was no demonstrated effect for the text structure on question performance. The research results suggest that the effect of prior knowledge and text structure on children's comprehension performance may vary depending upon the task, the information to be learned, and other reader factors such as ability.