On the specificity of expert knowledge about a soap opera: an everyday story of farming folk
✍ Scribed by Dawn K. Reeve; John P. Aggleton
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 113 KB
- Volume
- 12
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0888-4080
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Subjects who were highly knowledgeable about a radio soap opera (The Archers') were given one of two imaginary scripts to read. One story was representative of the normal events in The Archers' (a visit to a livestock market); the other was atypical (a visit to a boat show). These expert subjects were able to remember many more details of the typical, market story than a group of subjects who knew little about the soap opera. This expert advantage completely disappeared for the atypical story. This pattern of results occurred even though the two stories shared many parallel features and most of the questions (and answers) used to assess their remembrance were the same. The results, which were not due to superior guessing by the expert group, show that frequent listeners to a soap opera can demonstrate `expert knowledge'. The advantage that this confers is, however, highly selective and only pertains to events that are representative of the programme.