Learning From Text: Structural Knowledge Assessment in the Study of Discourse Comprehension

Domain knowledge is an important factor in discourse comprehension (for reviews of this literature, see Schneider, Körkel, & Weinert, 1990; Voss, Fincher-Kiefer, Greene, & Post, 1986). In general, readers with high domain knowledge perform better than readers with low domain knowledge on a variety of comprehension tasks. Knowledge effects have been demonstrated by manipulating subjects’ expertise (e.g., Spilich, Vesonder, Chiesi, & Voss, 1979), or by providing subjects with different amounts of prior knowledge (e.g., Bransford & Johnson, 1972).