ABSTRACT
This chapter describes three sources of higher-order knowledge that might play a role in the comprehension process: knowledge related to classes of text, such as the structure of multiple-character narratives; knowledge of subject-matter areas relevant to these texts; and procedures or strategies for understanding. It explains the relation between children's knowledge and story comprehension. The chapter is concerned with the question of how various types of knowledge and levels of expertise influence the comprehension process. The question of how knowledge influences comprehension can be examined in the context of both cognitive development and individual differences in knowledge of a content domain. The superior ability of high in baseball knowledge (HK) individuals to carry over appropriate macrostructure information and relate it to new information was interpreted in terms of the two possible sources of HK and low in baseball knowledge differences already mentioned.
