College students' memory for vocabulary in their majors: evidence for a nonlinear relation between knowledge and memory.

The effect of domain knowledge on students' memory for vocabulary terms was investigated. Participants were 142 college students (94 education majors and 48 business majors). The measure of domain knowledge was the number of courses completed in the major. Students recalled three different lists (control, education, and business) of 20 words. Knowledge effects were estimated controlling for academic aptitude, academic achievement, and general memory ability. Domain-specific knowledge consistently predicted recall, above and beyond the effect of these control variables. Moreover, nonlinear models better represented the relation between knowledge and memory, with very similar functions predicting recall in both knowledge domains. Specifically, early in the majors more classes corresponded with increased memory performance, but a plateau period, when more classes did not result in higher recall, was evident for both majors. Longitudinal research is needed to explore at what point in learning novices' performance begins to resemble experts' performance.