In these studies, people recalled additional, previously unrecalled information from stories following instruction to take a new perspective. The data clearly show the operation of retrieval processes independent from encoding processes. (SW)

The two studies outlined in this report gauged college undergraduates' ability to learn and to recall the content of certain passages when provided with "directed perspectives" or context clues. In the first study, 63 subjects were divided into three groups, were asked to read two stories, and were assigned a perspective (home buyer,…

This paper develops the thesis that the knowledge a person possesses has a potent influence on what he or she will learn and remember from exposure to discourse. After outlining some assumptions about the characteristics of the structures (schemata) in which existing knowledge is packaged, a theory of the processes involved in assimilating the…

Multiple regression was used to examine the relationship between the serial position and the rated importance of a proposition in a text and the probability of its appearance in free recall protocols. Eight passages were used in the study--four from a standard social studies textbook and four written for the study. Each passage was divided into…

Subjects read narratives about a meal at a fine restaurant or a trip to a supermarket. The same 18 items of food, attributed to the same characters, were mentioned in the same order in the two stories. As predicted from current formulations of schema theory, foods from categories determined to be part of most people's restaurant schemata were…

Two experiments were conducted, the purpose of which was to investigate the direct effects of questioning. In experiment one, 240 sophomores, juniors, and seniors from a small town high school read one of two versions of a 550-word passage describing the social behavior of the army ant. The subjects then took either a verbatim or paraphrase quiz,…