The Results
A regression analysis showed that prior knowledge predicted final test performance for new items, but only in the domain that they had prior knowledge for. People who came into the experiment with a stronger background in cooking learned more “new” facts about cooking, but not football. Similarly, people with a stronger background in football learned more “new” facts about football, but not cooking. Moreover, prior knowledge affected how people rated their ability to remember information. Cooking prior knowledge predicted how people rated their ability to remember facts about cooking, but not football, and vice versa.
Experiment 3
In a follow-up experiment, the researchers looked at how curiosity might be affected by prior knowledge. Using the same procedure described above, participants were asked to make a curiosity judgement after answering the question, but before learning the answer. So, after being asking In a kitchen, a claster is a type of what? Participants were asked, “How curious are you to know the answer to this question?” and given a scale from 1 (not curious at all) to 6 (very curious). Again, researchers found that prior knowledge predicted curiosity within that domain, but not the other. People with higher football knowledge were more curious about new football information, but not new cooking information, and vice versa.
Did prior knowledge cause people to be more curious about new information, or does curiosity (or interest) lead to more knowledge? The authors note that: “… there is a chicken-egg problem in determining directionality. It is possible that prior knowledge about a topic leads to increased interest in that topic. Alternatively, interest in a topic may lead students to seek out information about that topic, increasing their knowledge.” (2, pg. 493).
The Bottom Line
This highlights one of the difficulties with determining why students do well (or do not do well) with certain material. Is it because they are more interested? More motivated? More curious? Or is it because they happen to have the background knowledge to help them make enough sense of the material in order to become curious about it? The answer is likely a combination of all those factors where prior knowledge, interest, and curiosity reinforce each other, blurring the lines between them. What I take away from this, and what I tell my students, is that the more they learn the easier it will get. I don’t expect them to understand everything coming into the class (otherwise what would be the point in taking the class??), but I hope that by the end of the class they will be a little bit more curious.
