WHERE DOES KNOWLEDGE COME FROM - SPECIFIC ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN PRINT EXPOSURE AND INFORMATION ACQUISITION

In a study of 268 college students, measures of exposure to print pred icted individual differences in knowledge in a variety of domains even after individual differences on 4 indicators of general ability (high school grade point average, Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices, Nels on-Denny Reading Test-Comprehension subtest, and a mathematics ability test) had been statistically controlled. Although correlational, our results suggest that print exposure is an independent contributor to t he acquisition of content knowledge. The data challenge the view that knowledge acquisition is determined only by the efficiency of cognitiv e components that encode and store information. Instead, the results i ndicate that differences in exposure to information-particularly, writ ten sources of information-is a significant contributor to differences in knowledge across individuals.