Interactions among elaborative interrogation, knowledge, and interest in the process of constructing knowledge from text

Abstract

The authors examined the impact of elaborative interrogation on knowledge construction during expository text reading, specifically, the interactions among elaborative interrogation, knowledge, and interest. Three measures of learning were taken: recall, inference, and coherence. Elaborative interrogation affected all aspects of learning measured, with a significant interaction between elaborative interrogation and interest with regard to inference. The experimental effect on the measure of inference was larger for the students who had less interest than for the students who had more interest. There was also an interaction effect between knowledge and elaborative interrogation for coherence. The experimental effect on coherence was higher for students who had less knowledge than students who had more knowledge.