General Reading Ability or Topic Knowledge?
The 1988 Recht and Leslie study answered this question with results that surprised the research community — and changed how we understand reading.
The Problem
In the 1980s, reading researchers faced a puzzle. Traditional models assumed that reading comprehension was primarily a skill — you either had strong reading ability or you didn’t. Good readers would comprehend most texts well; poor readers would struggle with most texts.
But teachers noticed something different in classrooms. Students who struggled with reading in general would sometimes show surprising comprehension when the topic was something they knew well — dinosaurs, video games, a favorite sport. Could topic knowledge really overcome reading skill deficits?
Researchers Donna Recht and Lauren Leslie designed an elegant experiment to find out. Their baseball study reading research would become one of the most cited studies in reading science.
What Research Shows
Recht and Leslie recruited 64 seventh and eighth graders and tested them on two dimensions: general reading ability (high vs. low) and baseball knowledge (high vs. low). This created four groups of students.
Four groups: (1) Good readers who knew baseball, (2) Good readers who didn’t know baseball, (3) Poor readers who knew baseball, (4) Poor readers who didn’t know baseball.
The task: Read a passage describing a half-inning of baseball, then demonstrate comprehension by re-enacting the plays with a model field and figures, summarizing what happened, and sorting sentences by importance.
All students read the same 625-word passage about a fictional baseball game. The passage was written at a fourth-grade reading level — easy enough that decoding wasn’t the barrier.
The results overturned conventional wisdom.
The Deeper Analysis
Knowledge trumped reading ability. Poor readers who knew baseball significantly outperformed good readers who didn’t know baseball on every measure of comprehension. The knowledge-rich poor readers could re-enact plays accurately, summarize the action coherently, and identify the most important events.
Good readers without baseball knowledge struggled to make sense of the passage despite their superior reading skills. They couldn’t distinguish important plays from minor details. They failed to make the inferences that knowledgeable readers made automatically.
The study revealed that comprehension isn’t just about decoding words or even knowing their definitions. It’s about having the background knowledge that allows readers to make inferences, fill gaps, connect new information to existing mental frameworks, and distinguish what matters from what doesn’t.
Consider this sentence from the passage: “The runner on first broke for second on the pitch.” A reader with baseball knowledge instantly understands: the runner tried to steal, this is a risky play, the outcome depends on the catcher’s throw. A reader without that knowledge sees words but misses meaning. The text is comprehensible only if you already know what breaking for second means, what happens on the pitch, and why this matters.
The best performance came from good readers with high baseball knowledge — proving that skills and knowledge work together. But knowledge alone provided more comprehension boost than skills alone. This was the revolutionary finding.
Implications for Readers
The baseball study reading research has profound implications for anyone trying to improve comprehension:
- Knowledge gaps explain “mystery” failures. When you read something at an appropriate skill level but still don’t understand, the problem is often missing background knowledge, not weak reading skills.
- Pre-reading pays dividends. Spending time building knowledge before reading difficult texts improves comprehension more than simply practicing reading skills.
- Wide reading builds comprehension. Reading broadly across subjects accumulates the background knowledge that makes future reading easier.
- Domain expertise matters. Your reading comprehension varies dramatically by topic based on what you already know.
A law student with no science background reading a biotechnology patent faces the same challenge as the non-baseball readers. The words may be readable, but without knowledge of gene editing, protein synthesis, or cell biology, they’ll miss the meaning, fail to recognize what’s novel about the invention, and struggle to understand legal implications. Building relevant knowledge first would dramatically improve comprehension.
What This Means for You
The baseball study doesn’t diminish the importance of reading skills — it expands our understanding of what comprehension requires. You need both: the ability to decode and process text fluently, AND relevant knowledge that allows you to make meaning from what you read.
When tackling challenging texts in unfamiliar domains, don’t just push through confused. Pause and build knowledge. Watch an introductory video. Read simpler texts on the same topic. Look up unfamiliar concepts. This “pre-reading” isn’t avoiding the work — it’s doing the work that makes comprehension possible.
The practical takeaway: strategically build knowledge in areas you want to read better. Every concept you learn becomes scaffolding for the next text you encounter. To learn more about how knowledge supports reading, see Why Background Knowledge Is Your Reading Superpower or explore the full Science of Reading pillar.
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