Relative importance of aptitude and prior domain knowledge on immediate and delayed posttests.

Two groups of college students were given a pretest covering basketball knowledge and asked to read a passage about basketball history. One group (IDP) took an immediate posttest of 27 items and a delayed posttest 1 wk later of the original items and 27 new items. The 2nd group (DPO) took only the delayed posttest of 54 items. Finally, a control group simply took the pretest and the 54-item posttest and scored at chance level on the posttest. Correlational analyses determined that, for the IDP group, pretest scores were significantly related to the immediate posttest. For the delayed posttest, both Scholastic Aptitude Test—Verbal subtest and pretest scores accounted for significant and unique portions of the variance. The latter results were replicated for the DPO group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)