Abstract This study replicated a study conducted by Anderson, Reynolds, Schallert, and Goetz (1977) with two modifications: 1) Subjects were education majors, and 2) the study compared the performance of good and poor comprehenders. The subjects were thirty freshmen and sophomore students enrolled in two reading improvement classes who had attained stanine scores ranging from 2 to 6 on the Iowa Silent Reading Test (ISRT) comprehension subtest. Participation in the study was voluntary. The purposes of the study were to determine the effects of prior knowledge on whether good comprehenders, in comparison to poor comprehenders, 1) would exhibit superior interpretations of written discourse, and 2) would exhibit a superior level of awareness of ambiguity in the experimental passages and recall significantly more idea units. The findings were consistent with the assumptions of Anderson et al. (1977) that schematic interpretations have a high relationship to prior knowledge of the subjects. A significant difference was found for passage order. Sex of student was found to influence the number of idea units identified for both passages. No significant main effects for background knowledge on passage interpretation were found. No significant difference was found for performance of good and poor comprehenders on the experimental passages.