The Effects of Prior Knowledge and Schema Activation Strategies on the Inferential Reading Comprehension of Children with and without Learning Disabilities

The present study compared the reading comprehension abilities of students with learning disabilities (LD) and those of both their age peers and their reading-level peers. Reading passages included familiar and unfamiliar topics, so as to assess the use of prior knowledge under varying conditions. All passages tested inferential reading ability, since the answers to test questions could be inferred from content, but were not explicitly stated. Subject activation and experimenter activation of prior knowledge were also compared. All groups benefited from experimenter activation of prior knowledge, but these benefits were most noteworthy for subjects with LD, and when passage topics were unfamiliar. The subjects with LD performed very similarly to their reading-level peers, as opposed to their age peers. Thus, the findings shed some light on the nature of learning disabilities. Implications for instruction are explored.