How prior knowledge, WMC, and relevance of information affect eye fixations in expository text.
Authors:
- Johanna K. KaakinenJKJohanna K. Kaakinen
- Jukka HyönäJukka Hyönä
- Janice M. KeenanJKJanice M. Keenan
- 1 January 2003
- journal article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
- Vol. 29 (3) , 447-457
Abstract
This study examined how prior knowledge and working memory capacity (WMC) influence the effect of a reading perspective on online text processing. In Experiment 1, 47 participants read and recalled 2 texts of different familiarity from a given perspective while their eye movements were recorded. The participants' WMC was assessed with the reading span test. The results suggest that if the reader has prior knowledge related to text contents and a high WMC, relevant text information can be encoded into memory without extra processing time. In Experiment 2, baseline processing times showed whether readers slow down their processing of relevant information or read faster through their relevant information. The results are discussed in the light of different working memory theories.Keywords
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