Developing Readers' Knowledge through Analogy

UNFAMILIAR INFORMATION is often introduced to readers through analogy. The effect of this practice was investigated by examining three possible explanations of analogy's function: to activate specific analogous knowledge, to activate generally related knowledge, or to supply information which readers use to fashion their own comparisons. American high school students attempted to learn about the game of cricket from prose materials which were variously augmented with analogies drawn from the game of baseball. The students subsequently read and recalled newspaper accounts of cricket matches and made predictions and discriminations about open-ended cricket match situations. Across seven different dependent measures subjected to regression analysis, the consistent finding was that two factors-student prior knowledge about sports and baseball, and the provision of instructional texts about either baseball or cricket-explained more variance than any other factor or combinations of factors. In some instances, the more specific provision of analogies proved beneficial, especially for groups with differing levels of prior knowledge, or in conjunction with an informational text about baseball. These data were interpreted as providing strong support for a general knowledge activation hypothesis and modest support for a specific knowledge activation hypothesis, both of which were interpreted as consistent with recently emerging schema theoretic notions.