Interest research: a literature review and projection of its future

Interest is a very important concept in psychology and education. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical research on this subject. But it was not until 1980s that researchers began to give attention to the area and later in-depth study in the form of empirical research commenced. Interest research distinguishes two broad categories: personal and situational interest. The former is spontaneous and context-specific whereas the latter is enduring and context-general. The findings show that text-based interest, task-based interest and knowledge-based interest can produce vital influence on reading comprehension. But problems of various kinds still exist in the research in this area.