Expert Knowledge In Understanding Of Specialized News

Abstract

The assumption that underlying at this paper is that different levels of prior knowledge influence the setting up and realization of situation models in text comprehension in general, and reading specialized news in particular. This paper reports the results of a study intending to prove how and to what extent prior expert knowledge influences specialized news comprehension. 40 participants in the research, coming from two different disciplinary areas of the Universidad de Concepción, read two news texts: one about their own discipline, and one about another discipline. Further, the subjects had to answer two different questions, including those demanding expert knowledge to answer them. The data showed a significant difference between the specialized knowledge of the participants and their test performance, and so it does in the type of text and in the type of question. Briefly, expert prior knowledge enhances performance in comprehension of news about specific areas.