ABSTRACT
In experimental psychology, research on learning from text originated from investigations of human memory with lists of unrelated items. At the beginning of this research, the nonsense syllable was much appreciated, because it allowed memory to be investigated in a very controlled way. Memory could be investigated by controlling for prior exposure, familiarity, and meaningfulness of the material. Texts are usually not read for the purpose of reproducing or summarizing them at some later time. Because texts are most often studied to acquire new knowledge about a situation or a domain, the formation of this new knowledge also needs to be modelled. This is especially true when we concern ourselves with learning from text. To a certain degree, a text may be remembered word by word and by its meaning. Furthermore, learners will utilize their prior knowledge in combination with the new information provided by the text and construct a knowledge representation of the situations described by the text.
