Using the Sentence Verification Technique To Assess the Comprehension of Technical Text as a Function of Subject Matter Expertise

Abstract

We report four studies that are concerned with the construct validity of the Sentence Verification Technique (SVT) as a measure of reading comprehension. The studies proceed from the assumption that readers with greater subject matter expertise should comprehend technical text in their area of expertise better than readers with less subject matter expertise. Experiment 1 had graduate students in psychology, advanced undergraduate psychology majors, and undergraduates who had never had a psychology course, read and take an SVT test on technical psychological text and/or nontechnical book reviews. Experiment 2 measured text comprehension of the technical and nontechnical text at the beginning and end of a semester psychology course. Experiment 3 evaluated whether the text comprehension of readers who varied in level of expertise would be influenced by Kintschian text structure variables. Experiment 4 tested whether the SVT was a measure of sentence comprehension or a measure of passage comprehension. The results of these studies were consistent with the interpretation that the SVT is a measure of text comprehension.