Failure to "activate" relevant, existing background knowledge may be a cause of poor reading comprehension. This failure may cause particular problems with inferences that depend heavily on prior knowledge. Conversely, teaching how to use background knowledge in the context of gap-filling inferences could improve reading comprehension in…

Results of two studies using the Esper paradigm to determine development of rule application and discovery are reported. Subjects learned and generalized when rule and structure were provided, but there was little evidence of rule discovery. Manipulations of memory and attention facilitated learning, but only attention facilitated rule discovery.…