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Prior knowledge activation: Inducing engagement with informational texts

Article  in  Journal of Educational Psychology · June 1998

DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.90.2.249

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 Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
1998, Vol. 90, No. 2,249-260 0022-0663/98/S3.00

Prior Knowledge Activation: Inducing Engagement

With Informational Texts
Hiller A. Spires and Jan Donley
North Carolina State University

Failure to engage with informational texts is a problem frequently noted at the high school
level, at which students are expected to read independently. As a means of addressing this
issue, a prior knowledge activation strategy (PKA) was taught to ninth-grade students in which
they were encouraged to make spontaneous connections between their personal knowledge
and informational texts. Students who learned to use the PKA strategy consistently
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

outperformed students in a main idea (MI) treatment group and those in a no-instruction
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

control group on application-level comprehension questions but not literal-level questions. A

second study replicated the operations of the first study, with the addition of an MI-PKA
treatment designed to combine both strategies, Both the PKA and the MI-PKA combination
groups performed higher on application-level comprehension questions and demonstrated
more positive attitudes toward reading than the other groups.

Students frequently have difficulty reading and learning
from informational texts (Applebee, Langer, & Mullis,
1989; Armbruster et al., 1990), a significant problem during
the middle and secondary years when textbooks are a
primary source of information. Some education critics
suggest that the difficulty may be a function of how students
are socialized to approach reading tasks within school
contexts (Alvermann, 1986; Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991;
Goodlad, 1984). In traditional school settings, students are
encouraged to be collectors rather than creators of meaning
during the reading process, in keeping with the long-
established "transmission model" of reading. According to
this model, text processing involves the transmission of
meaning from the author to the reader via the text, which
serves as a repository of knowledge from which information
is extracted and passed along unchanged (Smith, 1985;
Straw & Sadowy, 1990). Students' own knowledge, attitudes,
and experiences have a limited role in the reading process
and may even be seen as interfering with comprehension.
The assumptions of this transmission model of reading—
that the text contains a static message and that the reader is a
passive receptor of information—have clearly been chal-
lenged by more recent constructivist models (Spiro, 1980;
Spivey, 1987,1990,1997). Spivey (1995) suggested that the
reader draws on a number of knowledge sources (e.g.,
rhetorical knowledge, background knowledge and experi-
ences, and cultural knowledge) to build meaning from a text.
This active negotiation between the reader and the text
results in a "constructed meaning" that is in direct contrast
Hiller A. Spires and Jan Donley, Department of Curriculum and
Instruction, North Carolina State University.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Hiller A. Spires, Department of Curriculum and Instruction,
College of Education and Psychology, North Carolina State
University, 602 Poe Hall, Campus Box 7801, Raleigh, North
Carolina 27695-7801. Electronic mail may be sent to
hiller@poe.coe.ncsu.edu.
to the traditional notion of "referential meaning" located
within texts. Constructivist views are consistent with a
wealth of cognitive research demonstrating that prior knowl-
edge is a critical component of reading comprehension. For
example, readers who possess high levels of knowledge
consistently exhibit better comprehension and retention than
readers with low levels of knowledge (e.g., Chiesi, Spilich,
& Voss, 1979; Langer, 1981; Pearson, Hanson, & Gordon,
1979). Good and poor readers differ not only in the amount
of knowledge they have available but also in how and
whether they make use of their knowledge to facilitate
comprehension. Good readers are more likely to use their
prior knowledge throughout the reading process than less
able readers (Bransford, Stein, Shelton, & Owings, 1981;
Oakhill, 1984). When less capable readers are prompted to
use their prior knowledge, however, their performance
improves and more closely resembles that of good readers
(Recht & Leslie, 1988).
When research findings on prior knowledge activation are
operationalized for practical classroom reading instruction,
they often take the form of teacher-directed prereading
strategies designed to help students activate or build back-
ground knowledge (Graves, Cooke, & Laberge, 1983;
Langer, 1984; McCormick, 1989). These prereading strate-
gies usually focus on helping students make connections
between their existing domain knowledge and new informa-
tion to be read in a text. Another body of literature
demonstrates that inserting elaborative questions within
factual expository material promotes recall (for a review, see
Pressley, Wood, et al., 1992). In addition, asking students to
generate questions during reading has proven beneficial for
various kinds of learning. These types of interventions have
proven successful with respect to student learning of text;
however, they typically rely on external prompts (either
directly from the teacher or embedded within the text) and
may not help students independently activate their prior
knowledge during reading (Woloshyn, Paivio, & Pressley,
1994). Although there is literature to support the effective-

249
 250 SPIRES AND DONLEY
ness of student-generated questions (e.g., see Wong, 1985,
and King, 1989,1992) during reading, the types of questions
that are encouraged are typically specific to a particular
domain of knowledge and may or may not tap students'
personal knowledge.
Whereas cognitive studies often focus on the role of
domain knowledge, another body of constructivist literature,
related to reader response theories, argues for the important
role of readers' personal knowledge and experiences. Deem-
phasizing critical authority and teacher transmission of
literary knowledge, reader response theories describe read-
ing as an active as well as intensely personal process. From
this perspective, prior knowledge includes not only the topic
knowledge readers have accumulated but also their personal
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
knowledge: the spontaneous and idiosyncratic associations
with personal experience prompted by the text (Rosenblatt,
1978, 1983; Fish, 1980; Iser, 1978; Bleich, 1975). The
function of personal knowledge is illustrated by Rosenblatt's
transactional theory, which suggests that, within any reading
experience, a reader's stance may fluctuate along a con-
tinuum between "aesthetic" and "efferent." A reader taking
an aesthetic stance brings his or her own personal meaning
to the text, in effect "living through" the textual event.
Rosenblatt argues that, to optimally experience literary texts,
students should take an aesthetic stance when reading, and
reader response pedagogies were designed to encourage this
type of personal engagement.
In contrast, when adopting an efferent stance, the reader's
"attention is centered predominantly on what is to be carried
away or retained after the reading event" (Rosenblatt, 1989,
p. 159). Meaning in informational texts is usually regarded
as more obvious, more straightforward, and less open to
idiosyncratic connections on the part of the reader. The
text-driven, outcome-oriented efferent stance is typically
assumed to be more appropriate for informational texts;
therefore, by default, these texts appear to fall outside the
purview of reader response theory.
This dismissal of informational text as requiring less
personal engagement on the part of the reader is unfortunate,
not only because it is inconsistent with broader constructiv-
ist assumptions but also because it has led to a potentially
valuable instructional approach being overlooked. In some
instances, reader response approaches have promoted more
higher level learning than traditional instruction in conjunc-
tion with the reading of literature (for a review, see Beach &
Hynds, 1991). For example, Beach (1990) found that the
amount and degree of students' autobiographical elabora-
tions were highly correlated with the amount and degree of
higher level interpretations of short stories, Petrosky's
(1981) study produced a similar result with autobiographical
elaborations of novels. When comparing aesthetic and
efferent responses to literature, Many (1990, 1991) found
that aesthetic responses included higher levels of understand-
ing of literature in terms of students' use of inferences,
analogies, and abstract generalizations. Similarly, Cox and
Many (1992a, 1992b) found that aesthetic responses in-
cluded creativity and variation, whereas efferent responses
consisted of the labeling of literary elements with few
elaborative references to the story.
If the act of reading involves constructive processes, as
many attest, then it is reasonable to expect reader response
pedagogies to have some beneficial effects for informational
texts in addition to literary texts. The shift in focus in
contemporary education from fact gathering to constructed
meaning suggests the need to broaden pedagogy to help
students take advantage of the full continuum of response.
Broadening the range of responses to informational text to
include the aesthetic or personal seems particularly advanta-
geous at secondary levels because of the unique developmen-
tal characteristics of adolescents: their essentially egocentric
view of the world (Elkind, 1970) and corresponding preoccu-
pation with issues that relate directly to their personal lives
(e.g., relationships, love, and work). Giving students permis-
sion to bring their personal knowledge into the school
context helps them establish the relevance of academic texts
to their own interests and purposes and has motivational
benefits for students in the middle and high school years
(Donley, 1991; Marshall, 1989; Probst, 1984). Actually
encouraging students to view informational reading through
the lens of personal experience and exploration may help
students construct a more lively and engaging relationship
with the text, which in turn may help them attend to and
possibly persist with the reading task.
In sum, we believe that "resocializing" students to
consider their own personal knowledge relevant to the
learning experience is likely to have both a cognitive impact
and an affective impact on learning. This assertion has been
validated in conjunction with literary texts through a variety
of descriptive and quasi-experimental studies. Conspicu-
ously absent from the literature, however, are experimen-
tally controlled studies attempting to apply reader response
pedagogies to informational texts to determine whether
cognitive and affective benefits might be achieved. We
therefore designed a strategy for reading informational texts
that invites students to acknowledge and build on the full
range of their prior knowledge, from personal to domain
specific. The strategy differs from those used in previous
prior knowledge studies in that it gives the reader control
over the conditions of prior knowledge activation (i.e.,
which knowledge and at what point in the text). The two
experimental studies reported here tested the hypothesis that
instruction in this prior knowledge activation strategy would
enhance ninth-grade students' comprehension of informa-
tional as well as literary texts. This approach was compared
with a more traditional text-based strategy in which the
focus was on identifying important factual information
during reading, similar to an efferent reading stance. Both
treatment groups were compared with a control group
answering study questions after reading.
Experiment 1
Method
Participants
The participants were 112 ninth graders who were enrolled in six
different classes of a required social studies course in an urban high
 PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ACTIVATION
school in the Southeast. The classes were identified for participa-
tion through teacher volunteers. From the six classes, equal
numbers of high, average, and low readers, as measured by the
comprehension subtest of the California Achievement Test (CAT,
1992), were randomly assigned to three treatment groups through
stratified random sampling.
Materials
Passages were selected from social studies textbooks in an
attempt to provide some level of ecological validity of instructional
and testing materials and to increase the opportunity for transfer to
authentic academic reading tasks. The reading material used during
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instruction was limited to a chapter from the students' social studies
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
textbook that had not yet been covered in class. Test materials
consisted of three passages from a comparable ninth-grade social
studies text (see Appendix for sample materials). Test passages
were designed by reducing portions of chapters to approximately
1,200 words in length; all original subheadings and markers were
kept intact. The social studies passages included topics on the
family, ecology, and equal rights. In addition, "The Open Win-
dow," a short story by Saki (1958), was included in its entirety as a
fourth passage to compare the relative effectiveness of strategies
with literary texts. Although this type of strategy has already
proven effective with literary texts, we decided to include a
narrative passage as a point of comparison within the context of our
particular study. Because narrative comparison was not the primary
focus of our study, we decided to use only one short story so as not
to overtax students during the testing phase.
For each passage, a comprehension test was developed that
included both literal and application-level questions. For each of
the three social studies passages, 10 multiple-choice questions were
developed to test literal comprehension. Multiple-choice questions
were used to test literal comprehension because this format readily
lends itself to tests of reliability. In addition, 10 application-level
questions, 5 open-ended and 5 multiple choice, were developed to
determine whether the reader could go beyond information in the
passage to generate appropriate answers. For example, in one of the
open-ended application questions for the passage on equal rights,
students were asked "Do you think new laws are needed to ensure
equal rights for all Americans? Why or why not?" The issue of
additional laws was not addressed explicitly in the passage;
therefore, students had to use their own background knowledge and
ideas to formulate a response. For the narrative passage, 6 literal
multiple-choice questions and 6 open-ended application-level
questions were designed. No multiple-choice application questions
were included.
All passages and corresponding tests were critiqued by three
social studies teachers and one reading specialist to establish
content validity. Materials and procedures then were pilot tested on
two sections of social studies classes that were not participating in
the study. The Kuder-Richardson 20 formula was used to estimate
internal consistency for the literal multiple-choice tests. This
procedure yielded the following reliability coefficients; .79 (fam-
ily), .85 (ecology), .80 (short story), and .83 (equal rights).
Procedure
Individual participants from six different sections of the same
social studies class were randomly assigned to one of three groups:
prior knowledge activation strategy (PKA), main idea strategy
251
(MI), or a no-instruction control group. All participants took part in
six 45-min instructional sessions followed by four 45-min testing
sessions (three immediate testing sessions [Test 1, Test 2, and
transfer test] and one delayed testing session 4 weeks later). Three
researchers who served as instructors were randomly assigned to
treatment groups.
Instructional treatments. Both the PKA and MI groups re-
ceived instruction in their respective strategies according to a
model of explicit instruction (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) in which
responsibility for strategy completion is gradually shifted from
teacher to student. This model of instruction, based on Vygotsky's
(1978) developmental theory, has been used successfully to support
other strategy instruction such as reciprocal teaching (Palincsar &
Brown, 1984), transactional comprehension instruction (Pressley,
Schuder, et al., 1992), and note-taking instruction (Spires, 1993).
Vygotsky posited that the process of expanding cognition is best
achieved through social interactions or "shared meaning" between
an instructor and learner. Over time, the cognitive processes of the
instructor are internalized by the learner and reappear in the
learner's thinking. Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) referred to this
same instructional process as "scaffolding" by connoting the idea
of the instructor providing a support (i.e., scaffold) for the learner
until the learner is capable of operating at a higher level without
support. Metaphorically, the scaffold is removed and the learner
functions independently at a new level of cognition. This is also
similar to the well-established concept that higher cognitive
functioning moves from the interpsychological (i.e., between-
persons) plane to the intrapsychological (i.e., within-person) plane
(Wertsch, 1978).
Explicit instruction in this study involved the following compo-
nents: (a) rationale and explanation of the strategy, (b) teacher
modeling of the strategy, (c) teacher and student collaborative work
with the strategy, (d) teacher and peer feedback on the use of the
strategy, and (e) independent use of the strategy. The gradual shift
of responsibility from the instructor to the student for strategy
completion occurs between the steps of teacher modeling and
independent use of the strategy.
Both treatment groups followed the model of explicit instruc-
tion. In both groups, the teachers began instruction by providing an
extensive rationale for why the strategy would be useful to the
students and how it would help them comprehend written texts
more successfully. Teachers then began modeling the use of the
strategies and verbalizing their thinking as they executed their
respective tasks. For example, the PKA instructors read aloud a
portion of the text and then modeled oral elaborations by directly
relating an idea in the text to personal knowledge they already
possessed; the information could be related to personal thoughts
and experiences of the reader or other subject domains. No initial
judgments were made about the quality or appropriateness of the
oral elaborations that the reader generated. The important goal was
that of having the students make some type of connection. If the
connection between the elaboration and the text was not readily
apparent, the teacher would follow up with "Can you explain why
that portion of the text reminded you of that specific experience or
information?" This helped the student reflect on the quality of the
connection that was being made. Often students would decide for
themselves that there was not a strong connection and then elect to
revise their elaboration. This type of prompting was based on
research showing that students who activate prior knowledge by
addressing "why" questions are better able to learn written
materials (for a review, see Pressley, Wood, et al., 1992).
The MI instructors read aloud portions of the text and then
verbalized their thinking as they took notes in a split-page
 252 SPIRES AND DONLEY
note-taking format (see Spires & Stone, 1989). The modeling
process included writing notes on an overhead screen while
verbally explaining how and why certain information was targeted
as main points and other information as corresponding details. In
addition, the instructors provided rationales for why they chose to
omit certain points from their notes and for why they combined
others.
The teachers in both instructional treatments then provided
opportunities for guided practice in which teachers and students
worked jointly to complete their respective tasks. During the
guided practice phase, students also worked in small groups and
then received feedback from both teachers and peers. Over the 6
days of instruction, teachers gradually released the responsibility
for task completion to the student, and by the end of the
instructional phase students were operating at an independent level
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with their respective strategies. For example, by the last 2 days of
instruction, PKA students were writing their elaborations spontane-
ously and independently out to the side of the text, and MI students
were writing main ideas and supporting details in a split-page
note-taking format (see Tables 1 and 2 for examples).
Control treatment. The control group worked with the same
reading materials as the experimental groups for both instruction
and testing. The instructional phase consisted of having students
read a designated portion of the text and then answer corresponding
questions at the end of the chapter. At the end of each session, the
instructor provided students with feedback on correct answers. The
rationale presented to the students was that engaging in sustained
silent reading over a period of time would provide them with
reading practice that, it was hoped, would affect their reading
performance.
Testing Procedure and Scoring
Testing began on Day 7, after the instructional component of the
study had been completed. The dependent measures used for
testing consisted of three immediate measures and one delayed
measure. For the first two measures, students read informational
passages and completed comprehension tests. The third measure
was used in conjunction with a short story to assess the transfer
effects of strategy training to narrative prose. The delayed measure,
consisting of an informational passage and corresponding test, was
administered 4 weeks after instruction to assess the degree to which
students continued to benefit from the strategy instruction.
For each of the four tests, students were instructed to use the
reading strategies they had learned while reading a passage within a
20-min time limit, After students had finished reading, the instruc-
tor collected the passage and distributed the test. Students were
allowed the remaining 30 min of the class period to complete the
test. Those who finished early were encouraged to proofread their
tests.
Each test consisted of 10 literal-level questions, with the
exception of the narrative test, which included only 6 questions. All
literal questions were presented in a multiple-choice format.
Application questions consisted of 5 open-ended and 5 multiple-
choice items, with the exception of the narrative test, which had no
multiple-choice questions and 6 open-ended questions.
Answers to the open-ended questions were scored by two raters
based on idea units described in Swarts, Flower, and Hayes (1984);
raters used criteria that targeted both the quality and quantity of
student elaborations. For each open-ended question, students could
score between 0 and 3 points. Interrater reliability ranged from .80
to 1.00 for each of these questions (see Table 3 for an example of
scoring).
Those students who missed more than 1 day of training or who
were absent during any of the testing sessions were excluded from
the study, which left a total of 79 participants for the data analysis.
The high attrition rate was a result of students from all three groups
missing part of the instruction because they were absent the entire
school day or were called out of class for photograph sessions.
Results and Discussion
A one-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA)
was conducted across treatment groups, with reading ability
(i.e., CAT comprehension subtest score, with 100 points the
maximum) as a covariate. The mean scores of the three
groups (i.e., control group, M - 75.68, SD = 28.06; MI
group, Af = 71.89.SZJ = 21.27;andPKAgroup,M - 66.91,
SD = 29.46) represented average to slightly above-average
Grade 9 scores relative to national norms. A covariate was
used because despite random assignment of individual
students to treatments, there was a marginally significant
difference across groups on this variable (p < .09). Results
are summarized in Tables 4 and 5.
The Wilks's lambda statistic was used as the multivariate
test of criteria. The overall value of this statistic showed a
significant main effect for treatment group, F(16, 136) =
4.01,/? = .0001.
Literal-Level Comprehension
Univariate F tests (with CAT scores as a covariate)
yielded a significant main effect for group on literal compre-
hension for one of the four tests, Test 2, F(2,75) = 4.47, p =
.01. Means and standard deviations are shown in Table 4.
With the Kramer adjustment of Tukey's honestly significant
difference (HSD) procedure on the adjusted means, the MI
group outperformed both the PKA and control groups; there
was no difference between the PKA and control groups.
There was also a marginally significant effect on the literal
component of the delayed measure, F(2, 75) - 2.70, p =
.07. The MI group outperformed both the PKA and control
groups, whereas no difference existed between the PKA and
control groups.
Application-Level Comprehension
Univariate F tests (with CAT scores as a covariate)
yielded a significant effect on both the open-ended and
multiple-choice formats for the application measures. Means
and standard deviations are shown in Table 5. Significant
results were observed on all four open-ended measures: Test
1,F(2,75) = 10.12,/> = .000; Test 2, F(2,75) = 13.35, p =
.0001; transfer test, F(2, 75) = 4.69, p - .01; and delayed
test, F(2, 75) = 8.47,/? = .005. With the Kramer adjustment
of Tukey's HSD procedure on the adjusted means, the PKA
group outperformed both the MI and control groups on all
dependent measures. No differences were observed between
the MI and control groups on Test 1, the transfer test, or the
delayed test; however, the control group scored higher than
the MI group on Test 2.
 PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ACTIVATION 253
Table 1
Samples of Text and Corresponding Student Responses From the Prior Knowledge Activation Group
Text Response
The family
The family is a group of people who are united by ties of mar- Fact is that some people just don't live in a fairy-tale life like
riage, blood or adoption. The family provides the basic needs that Many Americans don't care one way or the other about
of food, clothing, shelter, and affection for all of its members. their families, (personal knowledge)
The family usually is the first group to which a person belongs.
Infants are loved and cared for in their families. As they grow,
children are taught certain skills, values, and traditions.
The changing family
The people who settled America believed in strong family ties The Pilgrims settled in America. They got their large families
and the importance of a good family life. Many families, for together for a big meal and started Thanksgiving, (subject
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example, were large and included grandparents and other rela- knowledge)
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tives in the same household. Today most families are much

smaller. Their lifestyles have changed. Yet despite these
changes, Americans continue to believe in the importance of
the family.
The traditional family
How different was the colonial family from the family of today?
The first census of the United States, taken in 1790, showed
that the average family had about four children. Many families
were even larger. At that time, our country was largely rural,
which means that most American people lived and worked on
farms.

Each child was a welcome addition to the family, for there was This made me think of Little House on the Prairie because that's
plenty of work to be done on the farm. Older boys worked how it goes there. The boys work on the farm and the girls
with their father. They learned how to plow the soil, plant work inside, (personal-subject knowledge)
seeds, and harvest the crops. They also learned to care for the
animals, repair barns and fences, and do the many other chores
necessary on a farm. The mother taught the daughters to sew
and cook, make soap, and do the other household chores that
kept the family going.
The move to cities
During the 1800's, American life began to change fairly rapidly.
One hundred years ago, seven of every ten Americans lived on
farms or in rural areas. Today only one in four Americans lives
in a rural area. This change came about because of the remark-
able progress in science and technology that took place during
the past hundred years.

Americans soon found use for the new discoveries and inven- The light bulb and electricity were some of these new inventions,
tions. These led to the building of large factories in many (subject knowledge)
urban, or city areas. The factories needed many workers. At the
same time, the development of better farm machinery meant
that fewer people were needed to work on the farms. Farm
families began to move to urban areas to seek jobs in the facto-
ries. This movement of Americans away from the farms to the
cities resulted in changes in family life.

The family was once the main influence in the lives of children.
Many other influences also have become important for chil-
dren today. Schools have taken on part of a child's education
that was once thought only the job of the family. Television,
too, has become an important influence in the lives of the
young.

Two other trends in the American way of life have been putting My friend Julie's recently divorced. This has put a lot of emo-
stress on the family. One is the increase in the divorce rate. tional stress on her. (personal knowledge)
The other trend is the increase in the number of families in
which both parents work. This brings up the problem of who is
to take care of the children.
Note. Text excerpts are from American Civics (Constitution edition), by W. H. Hartley and W. S. Vincent, 1987, Orlando, FL: Harcourt
Brace. Copyright 1987 by Harcourt Brace. Adapted with permission of the publisher.
 254 SPIRES AND DONLEY
Table 2
Sample of Split-Page Notes From a Student
in the Main Idea Group
Main idea Corresponding details
Institutions Organized, customary ways of doing
things
Families Group of people united by marriage,
blood or adoption
Changing family Families used to be large & include
relatives
Now families are much smaller
In 1790 average family had four kids
Boys worked outside and girls worked
Traditional family
inside
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Farm family was basic work unit in
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colony
Move began in 1800's
New inventions led to factories
Move to cities
Machinery replaced farm workers
Families moved to cities to work in
factories
Smaller than past families
City family Kids spend more time in school
Vi the women between 16 and 64 work
outside the home
Elderly no longer live with kids
Life overall easier today because of
education and prosperity
Significant results also were observed on the multiple-
choice questions in Test 1,F(2, 75) = 14.09,/?= .0001; Test
2, F(2, 75) = 12.86, p = 0.01; and the delayed test,
F(2, 75) = 2.64, p - .07. With the Kramer adjustment of
Tukey's HSD procedure on the adjusted means, the PKA
group outperformed the MI and control groups on Tests 1
and 2. The source of the marginally significant difference
found for the delayed measure indicated that both the PKA
and MI groups outperformed the control group. (Note that
there was no multiple-choice test for the transfer measure.)
In summary, explicit instruction in how to activate prior
knowledge during reading positively affected students' per-
formance on application-level questions in Experiment 1.
On the application measure, the PKA group consistently
outperformed the MI and the control groups, on both the
open-ended and multiple-choice questions. The only excep-
tion was the delayed multiple-choice measure, on which the
PKA group outperformed the control group but not the MI
group. The PKA strategy seemed to transfer to narrative
prose even though the training was conducted on informa-
tional prose. Consistent with previous research (see Beach &
Hynds, 1991), it may be that the nature of the narrative
format encourages the reader to take an aesthetic stance,
which lends itself well to the type of personal engagement
that subsequently results in application-level thinking.
Having students engage in prior knowledge activation
during reading provides practice with thinking beyond the
text. This type of thinking then appears to carry over into
question answering that requires the student to go beyond
the text. Although purely speculative, it is possible that
students felt positive about being allowed to bring their
personal knowledge to bear on reading tasks that typically
are perceived as impersonal. As a result, students may have
felt more personally invested in the reading task.
Obviously, in an academic context, the successful reader
is expected to comprehend the factual information in the text
as well as think beyond the text on an application level. The
students in the PKA group did not have an advantage on the
literal comprehension measures. In fact, the MI group had a
slight advantage in terms of this type of performance,
although the results were statistically significant only for
Test 2. We therefore concluded that a strategy combining the
tasks of the MI and PKA groups might yield a more
well-rounded comprehension experience for the reader. In
addition, we decided that our research design might be
strengthened and have more direct application for the
classroom by having teachers rather than researchers con-
duct the instructional treatments.
Experiment 2
A second study was conducted to investigate the effects of
the PKA strategy when combined with the MI strategy. This
study was a replication of Experiment 1 with the following
exceptions: (a) A fourth group that combined PKA and MI
strategy instruction was added; (b) regular classroom teach-
ers conducted the instruction and testing instead of research-
ers; and (c) students' attitudes toward reading were assessed
to provide an understanding of the broader effects of the
strategy instruction.
Table 3
Sample Scoring for Open-Ended Application Question
Score Student response
0 No, I don't think so.
1 No, because if the mother is not willing to take care of
its kid personally it should not have had the kid.
2 Yes, I think business should be required to provide
child care centers. It is extremely difficult to find a
good daycare where you can be sure your child will
be properly taken care of and if the business pro-
vided it, it would make it much easier for the par-
ents. Plus the child and parent would be near each
other in case of an emergency.
3 No, overall, I don't feel that business should be
required to have child care centers because it would
be too expensive for them. If they can afford it,
however, I think it is a good idea because the parent
will be closer to their child in case the child needs
them and they will not have to waste gas to drive to
day care to pick up the kid. I do not trunk they
should be required to because it is not their respon-
sibility to find a way to take care of someone's
child. The parent should do that or should stay at
home for a while and take care of their own lid.
Actually, it is better for the kid and society if the
parents stay home with their children.
Note. The question was as follows: "Do you think that businesses
should be required to provide child care centers for the children of
their employees? Why or why not?"
 PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ACTIVATION 255
Table 4
Means and Standard Deviations for Literal Comprehension Measures: Experiment 1
Test 1 Test 2 Transfer test Delayed test
Adjusted Adjusted Adjusted Adjusted
Group M SD M M SD M M SD M M SD M
Control (n = 30) 8.30 1.62 8.42 8.67 1.60 8.79 4.60 1.28 4.71 7.00 1.78 7.12
Main idea (n = 25) 8.72 1.21 8.66 9.48 0.71 9.42 4.68 1.65 4.63 7.92 1.38 7.86
Prior knowledge (n =24) 8.58 1.69 8.49 8.63 1.76 8.53 4.63 1.66 4.54 7.21 1.64 7.11
Note. Ten points were possible for Test 1, Test 2, and the delayed test. Six points were possible for the transfer test.

Method assigned to each response ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5

(strongly agree) creating a range of possible scores from 25 to 125.
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Participants and Materials All other dependent measures were scored in the same manner as in
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Experiment 1. Open-ended application questions were scored by

The sample for this study consisted of 170 ninth-grade students
who were enrolled in required social studies classes at the same
urban high school the following year. Equal numbers of high,
average, and low readers, based on their performance on the
reading comprehension subtest of the CAT were assigned to each of
die four treatment groups through the process of random stratified
sampling. Those students who missed more than 1 of the 6 days of
training or who were absent during any of the testing sessions were
excluded from the final data set. This left a total of 161 participants
for the final analysis. The same instructional and testing materials
used in Experiment 1 were used in Experiment 2, with the addition
of a reading attitude survey.
Procedure
Students were randomly assigned to one of four treatment
groups: PKA, MI, MI-PKA, or a no-instruction control group.
Four instructors, regular ninth-grade social studies teachers, were
randomly assigned to treatment groups. A design limitation of the
study is that even though students and instructors were randomly
assigned to treatment groups, we were unable to control for teacher
effects. Instructors received 4 hr of training in their respective
treatments, as well as scripted lesson plans to follow for both
instruction and testing sessions. Although we did not share the
specific hypotheses of the study with the teachers, the teachers
understandably made their own judgments about the value of the
various instructional treatments. There are limitations of the study
to the degree that any of the teacher judgments inadvertently were
passed on to the participants. We met periodically with the
instructors to answer questions and address problems that arose
during the instructional sessions. In addition, we made unan-
nounced visits to the classrooms to observe instruction and to
ensure that established procedures were being followed.
Instructional procedures were identical to the first study with the
addition of the MI-PKA group. The instructors for this group
simply combined the explicit instruction procedures for the MI and
PKA groups so that students used the split-page note-taking format
to record main ideas and supporting details, as well as writing
reader-generated elaborations in the margins of the text. Because
the total instructional time remained constant across all groups, the
MI-PKA group received half the amount of explicit training on
each strategy of the other treatment groups.
Testing materials and procedures were the same as in Experi-
ment 1, with the addition of the Rhody Secondary Reading Attitude
Assessment (Rhody, 1978), a 25-item survey designed to assess
students' general attitudes toward reading. The survey includes
statements such as "You think reading is boring," to which
students respond using a 5-point Likert scale. Point values were
two raters according to the same criteria used in Experiment 1.
Interrater reliability ranged from .82 to .92 for each of the
questions.
Results and Discussion
A one-way MANCOVA was conducted across treatment
groups, with reading ability as a covariate (i.e., control
group, M= 56.71, SD = 28.59; MI group, M = 63.28,
SD = 27.86; PKA group, M = 67.02, SD = 26.21; and
MI-PKA group, M = 72.00, SD = 24.52). Despite random
assignment, there was a marginally significant difference
between groups (p < .07) on CAT scores after attrition.
Results for these analyses can be found in Tables 6 and 7.
Wilks's lambda was used as the multivariate test of
criteria. There was a significant main effect for treatment,
F(33, 389) = 7.43, p = .001.
Literal-Level Comprehension
Univariate F tests (using CAT scores as a covariate)
yielded a significant difference only for literal-level compre-
hension across groups, F(3, 142) = 8.11, p = .001. Means
and standard deviations are shown in Table 6. With the
Kramer adjustment of Tukey's HSD procedure on the
adjusted means, all three experimental treatment groups
outperformed the control group on the delayed measure. In
addition, there was a nonsignificant trend for the MI-PKA
group to outperform the other groups on Test 2 and the
transfer test.
Application-Level Comprehension
Univariate F tests (using CAT scores as a covariate) and
the Kramer adjustment of Tukey's HSD procedure on the
adjusted means yielded significant differences on both the
open-ended and multiple-choice formats for the application-
level questions. Means and standard deviations can be found
in Table 7. For the open-ended questions, both the PKA and
MI-PKA groups significantly outperformed the MI and
control groups on Test 1, F(3, 142) = 7.12, p = .001, and
Test 2, F(3,142) = 4.38, p = .006, For the transfer test, the
PKA group outperformed the control and MI groups, and the
MI-PKA group outperformed the MI group, F(3, 142) =
 256 SPIRES AND DONLEY

5.69, /» = .001. For the delayed measure, the PKA group

outperformed the control and MI groups, and the MI-PKA
group outperformed the control group, F(3, 142) = 5.01,

Significant results also were observed for multiple-choice

questions in Test 1,F(3,142) = 18.46, p = .001;Test2,F(3,
142) = 33.77, p = .001; and the delayed test, F(3, 142) =
•nmri
SO <O 00
f 30.48, p = .001. With the Kramer adjustment of Tukey's
HSD procedure on the adjusted means, all three experimen-
tal groups outperformed the control group, and the PKA and
MI-PKA groups outperformed the MI group. (Note that
there was no multiple-choice component for the transfer
test.)
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

1! Attitude Assessment
A one-way analysis of variance revealed significant
differences between groups, F(3,150) = 21.63,p = .001, on
o
to —_ t^
8," the Rhody Secondary Reading Attitude Assessment instru-
r^ cd as ment. With the Kramer adjustment of lYikey's HSD proce-
dure, the PKA and MI-PKA groups' attitude scores were
significantly higher than those of the control and MI groups
(i.e., there were more positive attitudes toward reading).
There were no differences between the PKA and MI-PKA
,« groups or between the control and MI groups. Means and
.3 standard deviations are shown in Table 8.
Experiment 2 confirmed the effects observed on applica-
I "+ SO Os
Os SO <N
od so d
tion measures in Experiment 1, but yielded fewer differences
on the literal measures. Significant results emerged on the
application measures in the PKA group, as well as the
MI-PKA group. The MI-PKA group performed similarly to
3 the PKA group across all application measures and outper-
I •05
formed both the control group and the MI group on the
immediate application measures. The reason that the MI-
od sd d
PKA group was less consistently superior to the MI and
control groups for the transfer and delayed open-ended
u
y 5 application measures may have been that these participants
S
XI
o
<0 5 received less overall instructional time with the PKA
strategy. The effects of less instructional time would be more
"E.
B
3
CO
odd
11 likely to surface on the measures that involved test passages
that were dissimilar to those used during instruction (i.e.,
transfer measure) or were separated in time from the
1
•a
ha>-o
instruction (i.e., delayed measure). However, that the MI-
PKA group's performance closely resembled the PKA
group's performance suggests that the addition of the MI
T3
a
u
strategy does not interfere with students' ability to perform
at the application level. What is clear from these results is
•I. o
O
to

00
that the groups that did not receive PKA strategy instruction
d "05 «5 were at a distinct disadvantage on application-level ques-
•S tions, regardless of question format (i.e., open ended or
I multiple choice).
The transfer test attempted to measure how well the
strategy could be used with narrative prose even though the
m || w
instruction had been administered with informational prose.
B II S^ On the basis of the results of both studies, it appears that the
a strategy will transfer to a different text domain. The delayed
2 o35 measure, which was administered 4 weeks later, attempted
•fii S to measure how well students would retain the strategy over
5S a period of time. In both studies, the groups that used the
 PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ACTIVATION
Table 6
Means and Standard Deviations for Literal Comprehension Measures: Experiment 2
Testl Test 2
Adjusted
Group M SD M M SD
Control (n = 39) 8.23 2.03 8.72 8.45 1.66
Main idea (n = 43) 8.38 1.77 8.51 8.95 1.60
Prior knowledge (n - 4 4 ) 8.34 1.88 8.29 8.63 1.83
Main idea-prior
knowledge (n = 35) 8.34 1.89 8.01 9.00 1.48
Note. Ten points were possible for Test 1, Test 2, and the delayed test. Six points were possible for the transfer test.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
PKA strategy generally performed better on this measure.
That is, the strategy was effective apart from initial instruc-
tion, and to some degree students seem to have internalized
the strategy.
Students in the PKA and MI-PKA groups had more
positive attitudes toward reading than the other groups.
Perhaps this was because the PKA strategy allowed students
to use their personal knowledge and have a voice in the text.
It is possible that they began to view reading as a process
that was personally relevant to them, and thus their attitudes
were positively affected. This possibility is consistent with
Hynds's (1989) demonstration of a connection between
positive attitudes toward reading and degree of interpersonal
knowledge brought to the reading of narrative prose.
General Discussion
First, the PKA strategy helped students with the process of
responding to application-level questions structured in both
multiple-choice and open-ended formats; results across
studies were fairly consistent on these measures. Second, the
PKA strategy generally did not benefit students in terms of
answering literal-level questions, with the exception of the
delayed measure in Experiment 2. Third, students who
learned to use the PKA strategy, whether alone or combined
with the MI strategy, demonstrated a more positive attitude
toward reading in general.
The noteworthy trends in these studies have implications
for both cognitive strategy research related to prior knowl-
edge and learning and research related to reader response
theories. These results are consistent with previous demon-
strations indicating that activation of student knowledge
enhances comprehension (Langer, 1981; McCormick, 1989;
Oakhill, 1984). This study was unique, however, in focusing
on activation of prior knowledge during reading. Having
students activate prior knowledge throughout reading fos-
tered a specific type of comprehension in this study, namely
application-level thinking. This study also was unique in that
prior knowledge activation was stimulated not simply by
domain-specific knowledge but by the combination of
personal and domain-specific knowledge, thus suggesting
that students' spontaneous and idiosyncratic connections to
informational text can enhance their ability to think beyond
the text.
The positive benefits of the PKA strategy are also
257
Transfer test Delayed test
Adjusted Adjusted Adjusted
M M SD M M SD M
8.74 4.24 1.57 4.63 5.46 2.12 5.76
9.01 4.33 1.72 4.46 7.05 1.67 7.05
8.74 4.29 1.91 4.30 7.22 2.21 7.08
8.73 4.63 1.46 4.32 8.00 1.44 111
consistent with previous cognitive strategy research demon-
strating that when students make elaborations to connect
their prior knowledge with text information, higher level
comprehension is enhanced (e.g., Ballstaedt & Mandl,
1984). However, some elaboration studies have demon-
strated that these types of elaborations during reading
enhance recall of literal information as well, although our
study did not find effects at the literal level (with the
exception of the delayed measure in Experiment 2). For
example, Reeder, McCormick, and Esselman (1987) found
that students who used self-referent processing exhibited
better recall of a text that contained a personality description
than students using other types of processing. This self-
referent processing is similar to the personal connections
students in the PKA condition made to the texts in our
studies, but the texts in the studies were quite different. The
short personality descriptions used in the Reeder et al. study
may have more easily provided a direct correspondence to
the literal-level processing in which students were asked to
engage.
Our results are also consistent with previous reader
response research in that personal connections during read-
ing fostered higher level thinking about text. This study was
unique, however, in focusing on informational texts rather
than narrative texts. An aesthetic approach to reading
textbooks as a means of encouraging students to go beyond
the literal meaning of the text seems viable on the basis of
the outcomes obtained here.
One potential reason for the more positive attitudes
exhibited by the PKA group is that the inclusion of personal
knowledge is inherently more motivating than the relatively
low-interest task of extracting main ideas. This is significant
given the positive role of intrinsic interest in supporting
cognitive engagement with learning (Schiefele, 1991).
Students were "resocialized," within the context of our
studies, to believe that going beyond the text with then-
personal thoughts was not only appropriate but highly
valued by both teacher and peers. As a result, readers'
personal knowledge was not only legitimized but actually
privileged within the instructional context. If efforts are to be
made to create serious conditions that enable students to
have meaningful learning experiences with informational
texts, then the notion of text engagement must be expanded
from simply a cognitive construct to one that includes values
 258 SPIRES AND DONLEY

Table 8
Means and Standard Deviations for Attitude Assessment
Measures: Experiment 2
Group M SD
Control (n = 36) 75.36 13.17
(S CS "* Main idea (« = 42) 79.95 13.83
a Prior knowledge (« = 40) 93.20 13.70
f""-
O <N ^
^

\£) \Q OO
ft
a Main idea-prior knowledge (n = 35) 100.58 11.75
Note. One hundred twenty-five points were possible for the
s attitude survey.
s
,8
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

and interests inherent to students. This may very well mean

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

giving students permission to bring their personal knowl-

•4) O\ 00 O
edge and experiences to bear during the reading of informa-
tional text and showing them how to do so.
There is a need for more research addressing students'
2c & thinking processes as they engage in an aesthetic stance with
informational text. Research is also needed to explore ways
to incorporate instruction in the PKA and MI strategies in a
more natural context, that is, within the regular classroom.

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Appendix

Sample Test Materials

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Sample Passage From Text on Ecology and Pollution

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Multiple-Choice Application
(Hartley & Vincent, 1987)
Choose the answer that provides the best interpretation of the
The world around us is our environment. It is made up of a layer following fictional newspaper headlines. Use the information from
of air, water covering three-fourths of the surface of the globe, and the passage as well as your own ideas.
soil. We depend upon the environment for food, clothing and 1. October 2, 2010: "Diminishing Supply of Green Plants
shelter. Every part of this environment is important to us Alarms Ecologists"
This could be alarming because
Sample Test Questions
a. plants release oxygen back into the atmosphere
Literal Comprehension b. plants take in oxygen from the atmosphere
c. plants release carbon back into the atmosphere
1. Another name for the total world in which we live is
d. plants take in smog from the atmosphere
a. ecology
b. balance of nature
c. environment
d. renewable resource

Open-Ended Application
Received September 30,1996
1. Describe several ways in which individual citizens can help Revision received December 1, 1997
protect our nation's environment. Accepted December 1,1997 •

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