Text Belief Consistency Effects in the Comprehension of Multiple Texts With Conflicting Information

When reading multiple texts about controversial scientific issues, learners must construct a coherent mental representation of the issue based on conflicting information that can be more or less belief-consistent. The present experiment investigated the effects of text–belief consistency on the situation model and memory for text. Students read four texts about a scientific controversy. Learners' situation model was biased towards their beliefs when belief-consistent and belief-inconsistent texts were presented block-by-block. When the texts were presented alternatingly, situation models for belief-consistent and belief-inconsistent texts were equally strong. Moreover, the text base was better for belief-inconsistent texts. These results support the idea that prior beliefs influence the processing of conflicting information in multiple texts differently on the level of the situation model and on the propositional text base. A more balanced situation model of scientific controversies can be promoted by presenting belief-consistent and belief-inconsistent texts in an alternating sequence.

[1]  J. Wiley.  A fair and balanced look at the news: What affects memory for controversial arguments?☆ , 2005 .

[2]  Edgar Erdfelder,et al.  G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences , 2007, Behavior research methods.

[3]  J. Levine,et al.  The learning and forgetting of controversial material. , 1943 .

[4]  M. Anne Britt,et al.  Reading multiple texts about climate change: The relationship between memory for sources and text comprehension , 2010 .

[5]  Ivar Bråten,et al.  Trust and mistrust when students read multiple information sources about climate change , 2011 .

[6]  Murray Singer,et al.  Verification of Text Ideas during Reading. , 2006 .

[7]  S. Chaiken,et al.  The psychology of attitudes. , 1993 .

[8]  Heiner Deubel,et al.  The mind's eye : cognitive and applied aspects of eye movement research , 2003 .

[9]  Susan R. Goldman,et al.  Extending capacity-constrained construction integration: Toward "smarter" and flexible models of text comprehension , 1996 .

[10]  S. Holm.  A Simple Sequentially Rejective Multiple Test Procedure , 1979 .

[11]  F. Schmalhofer,et al.  Three components of understanding a programmer's manual: Verbatim, propositional and situational representations , 1986 .

[12]  L. Baker.  Metacognition, comprehension monitoring, and the adult reader , 1989 .

[13]  Johanna Maier.  Understanding conflicting information on social science issues 1 Running Head: Understanding conflicting information on social science issues How non-experts understand conflicting information on social science issues: The role of perceived plausibility and reading goals , 2012 .

[14]  R. Maki.  Memory for script actions: Effects of relevance and detail expectancy , 1990, Memory & cognition.

[15]  Anthony G. Greenwald,et al.  The cognitive representation of attitudes. , 1989 .

[16]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[17]  A. Graesser,et al.  Memory for actions in scripted activities as a function of typicality, retention interval, and retrieval task , 1981, Memory & cognition.

[18]  Jukka Hyönä,et al.  Perspective Effects on Online Text Processing , 2002 .

[19]  Jacob Cohen,et al.  Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences , 1979 .

[20]  Ernest T. Goetz,et al.  Reading in Perspective: What Real Cops and Pretend Burglars Look for in a Story. Technical Report No. 266. , 1982 .

[21]  Tobias Richter,et al.  You don't have to believe everything you read: background knowledge permits fast and efficient validation of information. , 2009, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[22]  D. Davidson,et al.  Recognition and Recall of Irrelevant and Interruptive Atypical Actions in Script-Based Stories , 1994 .

[23]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Are Good Texts Always Better? Interactions of Text Coherence, Background Knowledge, and Levels of Understanding in Learning From Text , 1996 .

[24]  Mike Rinck,et al.  Chapter 16 – Eye Movement Measures to Study Global Text Processing , 2003 .

[25]  L. Reder.  Plausibility Judgments versus Fact Retrieval: Alternative Strategies for Sentence Verification. , 1982 .

[26]  W. Kintsch.  The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: a construction-integration model. , 1988, Psychological review.

[27]  M. Sherif,et al.  The psychology of attitudes. , 1946, Psychological review.

[28]  M. A. Britt,et al.  Toward a theory of documents representation. , 1999 .

[29]  Roger C. Schank,et al.  SCRIPTS, PLANS, GOALS, AND UNDERSTANDING , 1988 .

[30]  T. Trabasso,et al.  Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension. , 1994, Psychological review.

[31]  Richard C. Anderson,et al.  Recall of Previously Unrecallable Information Following a Shift in Perspective. Technical Report No. 41. , 1977 .

[32]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Strategies of discourse comprehension , 1983 .

[33]  Tobias Richter,et al.  Can readers ignore implausibility? Evidence for nonstrategic monitoring of event-based plausibility in language comprehension. , 2013, Acta psychologica.

[34]  Paul van den Broek,et al.  The influence of reading purpose on inference generation and comprehension in reading. , 1999 .

[35]  Tobias Richter,et al.  How Nonexperts Understand Conflicting Information on Social Science Issues , 2013, J. Media Psychol. Theor. Methods Appl..

[36]  L. Festinger,et al.  A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance , 2017 .

[37]  L. Baker,et al.  Differences in the Standards Used by College Students to Evaluate Their Comprehension of Expository Prose. , 1985 .

[38]  Johanna K. Kaakinen,et al.  Perspective Effects on Expository Text Comprehension: Evidence From Think-Aloud Protocols, Eyetracking, and Recall , 2005 .

[39]  R. Ratcliff.  Methods for dealing with reaction time outliers. , 1993, Psychological bulletin.

[40]  Roger Ratcliff,et al.  Methods for Dealing With Reaction Time Outliers , 1992 .