ENHANCING ADOLESCENTS RECALL OF FACTUAL CONTENT - THE IMPACT OF PROVIDED VERSUS SELF-GENERATED ELABORATIONS

The purpose of this study was to examine the potency of elaborative in terrogation relative to supported learning contexts for adolescent lea rners. One hundred and twenty students were instructed to use one of f our learning strategies to learn animal facts: a questioning strategy that employs why questions (elaborative interrogation); a judgment con dition where students assessed the quality of provided elaborations; a nd two repetition conditions where students either repeated experiment er-provided elaborations or non-elaborated facts. As in existing resea rch with young children and university students, these 10th- to 12th-g raders demonstrated greater learning when instructed to use elaborativ e interrogation relative to repetition of elaborated or non-elaborated facts. Although elaborative interrogation did not significantly diffe r from the judgment condition, students indicated that they accessed p rior knowledge more often when employing the elaborative interrogation strategy, suggesting that elaborative interrogation facilitates learn ing by encouraging access to prior knowledge.