The Influence of Context on Story Recall and Feelings of Comprehension

Abstract

Children of 8 and 10 years read stories either with or without prior information regarding the setting of the story. For both age groups, the provision of setting information aided recall. Moreover, a significant majority of each age group claimed that they had found it easier to understand the story with setting information provided as compared to the story without. A follow-up study lent validity to these introspections. The provision of setting information facilitates recall by improving comprehension rather than retrieval alone: when setting information was provided after comprehension but prior to recall, no improvement in recall was obtained.

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