Embedded Clause Effects on Recall: Does High Prior Knowledge of Content Domain Overcome Syntactic Complexity in Students of Spanish?

Abstract

This study tested the effect of embedded clauses on recall for English‐speaking high school students reading Spanish historical texts. Twenty‐four students with high prior knowledge of Incan history and 24 with low prior knowledge read texts concerning the Incas. Three levels of syntactic complexity were defined: Level I (LI) contained the essential ideas for the topic; Level II (LII) embedded one clause with nonessential information within LI sentences; and Level III (LIII) embedded an additional clause within LII sentences. A significant decrease in the recall of the essential propositions occurred as the level of syntactic complexity increased. Readers with high prior knowledge recalled significantly more of the essential information for LI and LII. However, recall scores for the essential propositions in LIII were nearly equal to those for the low prior‐knowledge group. In conclusion, the study found that complexity of sentence structure seemed to cancel the advantage of previous exposure to the content domain.