An instructional application of schema theory

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to assess the effects of structural schema training and text organization on the comprehension and recall of scientific prose. As a preliminary step, a structural schema specifying the categories of knowledge important to understanding a scientific theory was developed. This schema was subsequently used as a prose processing aid in the two experiments. The results of these experiments indicate that training students on the use of this schema significantly facilitated recall of scientific text. Additionally, it was found in the second experiment that organizing the presentation sequence of the major concepts of a passage according to this structural schema significantly improved subsequent recall in comparison to an alternative presentation sequence. Additionally, the relationships between field independence, impulsivity, and perception of stress and their possible interactions with the treatment conditions was assessed. Results of the present study indicate that when verbal ability is covaried, that no significant relationships exist between these individual differences measures, or their interactions with the treatment conditions, and discourse recall.