The Effects of Readers' Misconceptions on Comprehension of Scientific Text.

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of readers' misconceptions on text compre- hension. College students with misconceptions in science were asked to read and recall a text that contradicted their misconceptions. Students with no misconceptions served as the control group. Both online (think-aloud, reading times) and offline (recall) measures were obtained. The results suggest that readers' misconceptions often do not affect the online processes themselves but do influence the content of those processes and, consequently, the offline memory representation for the text after reading is completed. Much of the learning that takes place in and out of schools is based on successful comprehension of texts. Readers actively construct a memory representation of the text that critically de- pends on their interpretation in light of prior knowledge. The success of the comprehension process depends on the integration of readers' prior knowledge with textual information (Goldman & Bisanz, 2002; Kintsch, 1988, 1998; van den Broek, Virtue, Ever- son, Tzeng, & Sung, 2002). The powerful effects of readers' prior knowledge in text comprehension have been documented early on (Bartlett, 1932), resulting in a large body of literature indicating that prior knowledge increases memory of texts for both young and adult readers (e.g., Chiesi, Spilich, & Voss, 1979; Dochy, Segers, & Buehl, 1999; Means & Voss, 1985; Recht & Leslie, 1988). The role of inaccurate prior knowledge, however, has received far less attention despite the fact that readers with inaccurate knowledge are the default case rather than the exception (Driver, Squires, Rushworth, & Wood-Robinson, 1994). Our aim in this article is to explore the effects of inaccurate prior knowledge on text compre- hension, focusing both on the final product of reading a text and on the actual processes that take place during reading and lead to this product. To assess the effects of prior knowledge on text comprehension, one must consider both offline products and online processes (Just