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Distinguishing Effects Of Domain Knowledge And General Knowledge On Passage Fluency, Oral Reading Errors, And Comprehension, Sarah Jane Priebe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation was to understand the relationship between prior domain knowledge, general world knowledge, word identification, and comprehension. Previous research (Priebe, Keenan, & Miller, in press) showed that prior knowledge can facilitate both word identification and fluency, and this dissertation asked whether the effects of prior knowledge also extend to general world knowledge. Three studies aimed at clarifying the distinction between prior domain knowledge and general world knowledge were conducted. Study 1 used a within-subjects design to control for differences in general world knowledge by examining the effects of different levels of prior domain knowledge within the …