| The primary purpose of this investigation was to determine whether level and condition of prior knowledge have a differential effect on the question answering of children varying in age and reading achievement level. Another purpose was to determine whether there is evidence supporting a developmental theory of poor reading comprehension. The final purpose was to determine whether the level and condition of prior knowledge have a differential effect on the answering of different types of comprehension questions.; The eighty-four elementary-aged children who participated in the study were equally divided into the following groups: (a) good fifth grade readers reading on the sixth grade level, (b) poor fifth grade readers reading on the third grade level, and (c) good second grade readers reading on the third grade level.; The subjects met individually with the examiner to assess their knowledge concerning sharks and snakes and then to read informational passages and answer comprehension questions.; The study included two split plot block factorial designs. The between subject factors were grade/ability groups (good second, poor fifth, good fifth), level of prior knowledge (high, low), and block (A--easy sharks, hard snakes; B--easy snakes, hard sharks). The within subject factors were the topics (snakes, sharks), difficulty of the passages (3.0, 6.0 readability levels), and types of questions (one-idea verbatim, one-idea paraphrase, two-ideas verbatim, text implicit, and knowledge implicit). The second design included an additional within factor--condition of prior knowledge (accurate, inaccurate, incomplete, void). Data were analyzed using factorial analyses of variance with repeated measures and Newman-Keuls multiple comparisons.; This study yielded the following results: (1) Level of prior knowledge had a significant effect on the question answering of both the older and younger good readers but not on the poor fifth grade readers. (2) Good fifth grade readers with low prior knowledge were not significantly better than the poor fifth grade readers with low prior knowledge when compared on their instructional levels. (3) Good fifth grade readers were significantly better than the other two groups in answering questions from all the conditions of prior knowledge. (4) No significant differences were found between poor fifth grade readers and good second grade readers. (5) Level of prior knowledge had a significant effect on the answering of all types of questions except the one-idea verbatim. |
