Does learners' prior knowledge moderate the detrimental effects of seductive details in reading from text? A 2 by 3 study

Previous work on seductive details has demonstrated that interesting but irrelevant messages hinder students' text learning. Considering that there is little evidence suggesting the relationship between seductive details and prior knowledge, the present study examined how seductive details affect learning in terms of prior knowledge to address the gap. Using a 2 (prior knowledge: high or low) × 3 (seductive details: not presented, presented first, and presented last) design we asked students (N = 209) drawn from a Chinese middle school to learn a text about the earth. The results showed that, low-prior-knowledge participants reading only base passage outperformed those reading seductive details (regardless of the placement) on both recall and problem-solving performance; High-prior-knowledge participants who only read the base passage and those who read seductive details at the end outperformed those who read seductive details first on problem-solving performance. The findings indicate that prior knowledge can compensate the negative effect of seductive details conditionally. Implications for research and practice are delineated and future research directions are presented.