EFFECTS OF ELABORATIVE INTERROGATION ON YOUNG LEARNERS RECALL OF FACTS

Elementary school children and preschoolers were instructed to use an elaboration strategy, elaborative interrogation, which involves respon ding to ''why'' questions. The response requires learners to search th eir own knowledge to try to make novel facts more meaningful. In each of 6 studies, students were presented novel facts that were consistent with the types of facts they might encounter when learning from texts (e.g., facts about animal behaviors, fictional characters, or Canadia n provinces). Elementary students (grades 4-8) demonstrated much highe r recall for these facts when they were instructed to use elaborative interrogation to generate their own elaborations of facts rather than studying experimenter-provided elaborations or repeating the facts. Pr eschoolers' (ages 2-6) performance was also higher, although benefits were more modest at this age. The successful implementation of elabora tive interrogation was related to learners' knowledge base, so that ch ildren with more expansive and developed knowledge bases demonstrated greater learning gains than their less knowledgeable peers. We discuss dependencies among strategies, learning, and knowledge base as critic al in determining applications of elaborative interrogation in classro oms.