The effect of familiarization on reading comprehension

Abstract

College students (N = 35) familiarized on paralogs which signified many of the important concepts and relationships in a story were able to answer correctly significantly more recall comprehension questions about the story than were subjects (N = 33) who were familiarized on paralogs that were irrelevant to the story. The data indicated that the facilitation from the relevant familiarization was fairly uniform across the questions. The implications of the findings for teaching were briefly discussed. © 1967, Psychonomic Press. All rights reserved.