Abstract
The goal of this study was to examine how individual variation in readers’ skills and, in particular, their background knowledge about a text are related to text memory. Recollection and familiarity estimates were obtained from remember and know judgments to text ideas. Recollection estimates to old items were predicted by readers’ background knowledge, but not by other comprehension-related factors, such as word-decoding skill and working memory capacity. False alarms involving recollection of new items (inferences) were diminished as a function of verbal ability, working memory capacity, and reasoning but increased as a function of background knowledge. The results suggest that recollection indexes the reader’s ability to construct a text representation in which text ideas are integrated with relevant domain knowledge. Moreover, these results highlight the importance of background knowledge in explaining individual variation in comprehension and memory for text.
Article PDF
References
Alba, J. W., & Hasher, L. (1983). Is memory schematic? Psychological Bulletin, 93, 203–231.
Anderson, R. C., & Pichert, J. W. (1978). Recall of previously unrecallable information following a shift in perspective. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 17, 1–12.
Bell, L. C., & Perfetti, C. A. (1994). Reading skill: Some adult comparisons. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 244–255.
Bower, G. H., Black, J. B., & Turner, T. J. (1979). Scripts in memory for text. Cognitive Psychology, 11, 177–220.
Bransford, J. D., & Johnson, M. K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 11, 717–726.
Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 19, 450–466.
Donaldson, W. (1996). The role of decision processes in remembering and knowing. Memory & Cognition, 24, 523–533.
Engle, R. W., Tuholski, S. W., Laughlin, J. E., & Conway, A. R. A. (1999). Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent-variable approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128, 309–331.
Gernsbacher, M. A. (1990). Language comprehension as structure building. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gernsbacher, M. A., & Faust, M. E. (1991). The mechanism of suppression: A component of general comprehension skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 17, 245–262.
Gernsbacher, M. A., & Faust, M. E. (1995). Skilled suppression. In F. N. Dempster & C. J. Brainerd (Eds.), Interference and inhibition in cognition (pp. 295–327). San Diego: Academic Press.
Graesser, A. C., & Clark, L. F. (1985). Structures and procedures of implicit knowledge. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Jacoby, L. L., & Dallas, M. (1981). On the relationship between autobiographical memory and perceptual learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 110, 306–340.
Johnson, W., & Kieras, D. (1983). Representation-saving effects of prior knowledge in memory for simple technical prose. Memory & Cognition, 11, 456–466.
Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1992). A capacity theory of comprehension: Individual differences in working memory. Psychological Review, 99, 122–149.
Kintsch, W. (1988). The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: A construction-integration model. Psychological Review, 95, 163–182.
Long, D. L., Johns, C. L., & Morris, P. E. (2006). Comprehension ability in mature readers. In M. J. Traxler & M. A. Gernsbacher (Eds.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (2nd ed., pp. 801–834). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Long, D. L., Oppy, B. J., & Seely, M. R. (1994). Individual differences in the time course of inferential processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 20, 1456–1470.
Long, D. L., Oppy, B. J., & Seely, M. R. (1997). Individual differences in readers’ sentence- and text-level representations. Journal of Memory & Language, 36, 129–145.
Long, D. L., & Prat, C. S. (2002). Memory for Star Trek: The role of prior knowledge in recognition revisited. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 28, 1073–1082.
Long, D. L., Wilson, J., Hurley, R., & Prat, C. S. (2006). Assessing text representations with recognition: The interaction of domain knowledge and text coherence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 32, 816–827.
Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252–271.
Moravcsik, J. E., & Kintsch, W. (1993). Writing quality, reading skills, and domain knowledge as factors in text comprehension. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47, 360–374.
Perfetti, C. A. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford University Press.
Perfetti, C. A. (1994). Psycholinguistics and reading ability. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 849–894). San Diego: Academic Press.
Raven, J. C. (1962). Advanced progressive matrices (Set II). London: Lewis.
Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (1989). Exposure to print and orthographic processing. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 402–433.
Sulin, R. A., & Dooling, D. J. (1974). Intrusion of a thematic idea in retention of prose. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 103, 255–262.
Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology, 26, 1–12.
Waters, G. S., & Caplan, D. (2003). The reliability and stability of verbal working memory measures. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35, 550–564.
Yonelinas, A. P. (2002). The nature of recollection and familiarity: A review of 30 years of research. Journal of Memory & Language, 46, 441–517.
Yonelinas, A. P., & Jacoby, L. L. (1995). The relation between remembering and knowing as bases for recognition: Effects of size congruency. Journal of Memory & Language, 34, 622–643.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The research reported here was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF0231152) and the National Institutes of Health (NICHD 1 R01 HD48914-1A2).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Long, D.L., Prat, C., Johns, C. et al. The importance of knowledge in vivid text memory: An individual-differences investigation of recollection and familiarity. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15, 604–609 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.3.604
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.3.604