Topic Interest, Text Representation, and Quality of Experience

Abstract

This study investigated the relations among topic interest, prior knowledge, verbal ability, quality of experience, and text learning. A total of 107 12th-grade students had to read two different texts. Prior to reading the texts, topic interest and prior knowledge were assessed. Scores on the verbal subscale of a school-related ability test were used as indicators of verbal ability. Quality of subjective experience was assessed on line during the reading phase. Recognition and verification tests served to assess the verbatim, propositional, and situational text representations. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that interest was negatively related to the verbatim representation and positively related to the propositional representation. No relation between interest and the situational representation was found. Verbal ability was positively related to both the verbatim and the situational representation. Prior knowledge was only weakly related to any representational component. Only interest, but neither verbal ability nor prior knowledge, could predict quality of experience in the reading phase.