THE EFFECT OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND METACOGNITION ON THE ACQUISITION OF A READING-COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of expert knowledge and metacognitive knowledge on strategy acquisition using an ecologically valid task. Fourth- and fifth-grade boys who were poor readers and baseball experts were trained in the use of a reading strategy (asking why questions), with instruction being embedded in either baseball or nonbaseball stories. The boys were tested for strategy use, recall, and accuracy of monitoring 1 to 3 days after training, then again 2 to 3 weeks later. Boys trained using baseball stories demonstrated greater strategy use at both post-tests than boys trained using nonbaseball stories, indicating that knowledge base aided in the acquisition of a reading comprehension strategy. Boys with higher declarative metacognition scores demonstrated better strategy acquisition and increased literal recall. All types of recall were higher for baseball stories. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.