Buchin Zachary L, Mulligan Neil W
Department of Psychology, Union College.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2025 Jun;31(2):84-98. doi: 10.1037/xap0000520. Epub 2024 Oct 14.
It is commonly claimed that higher domain knowledge enhances new learning-the knowledge-is-power hypothesis. However, a recent meta-analysis (Simonsmeier et al., 2022) has challenged this idea, finding no overall relationship between prior knowledge and new learning across hundreds of highly variable effect sizes. The authors note that this variability and lack of randomized controlled experiments preclude broad claims regarding the influence of prior knowledge on learning. The present study (conducted in 2020) provides an experimental assessment of the causal effect of prior domain knowledge on new learning. Participants were randomly assigned to receive training in one of two academic domains over 3 days before learning new information about topics in both domains for a later test. Training was specific to three of four topics within that domain, allowing the untrained topic in the trained domain to act as a measure of new learning in that domain. New learning, measured as final test performance or knowledge gains, did not differ between the high and low domain knowledge conditions. Experimentally induced prior domain knowledge did not affect new learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
人们普遍认为，更高的领域知识能促进新的学习——即知识就是力量的假设。然而，最近的一项荟萃分析（西蒙斯迈尔等人，2022年）对这一观点提出了挑战，发现在数百个高度可变的效应量中，先前知识与新学习之间不存在总体关系。作者指出，这种变异性以及缺乏随机对照实验，使得关于先前知识对学习影响的广泛论断难以成立。本研究（于2020年进行）对先前领域知识对新学习的因果效应进行了实验评估。在学习两个领域的主题以进行后续测试之前，参与者被随机分配接受为期3天的两个学术领域之一的培训。培训针对该领域四个主题中的三个，使得在接受培训的领域中未接受培训的主题能够作为该领域新学习的一种衡量标准。以最终测试成绩或知识增益来衡量的新学习，在高领域知识条件和低领域知识条件之间没有差异。实验诱导的先前领域知识并未影响新学习。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》（c）2025年美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
