Story stimuli for instantiating true and false beliefs about the world.

We offer short story ("vignette") materials that have been developed and tested with the intention of influencing people's true and false beliefs about the world. First, we present norming data on the baseline rates at which participants from both U.S.-census matched and general U.S. online samples were correctly able to classify a selected set of accurate (e.g., aerobic exercise strengthens your heart and lungs) and inaccurate (e.g., aerobic exercise weakens your heart and lungs) assertions as "True" or "False." Next, we present data which validate that reading vignettes in which people discuss these accurate and inaccurate assertions influences participants' subsequent judgments of the validity of the asserted claims. These vignettes are brief, easy-to-read, allow for flexible and accountable online data collection, and reflect realistic accurate and inaccurate claims that people routinely encounter (e.g., preventative health behaviors, use of alternative medicines and therapies, etc.). As intended, vignettes containing inaccurate assertions increased participants' subsequent judgment errors, while vignettes containing accurate assertions decreased participants' subsequent judgment errors, both relative to participants' judgments after not reading related information. In an additional experiment, we used the vignette materials to replicate findings from Salovich et al. (2021), wherein participants reported lower confidence in correct judgments and higher confidence in incorrect judgments after having read inaccurate assertions. Overall, these materials are well suited for investigations on the consequences of exposures to accurate and inaccurate information, address limitations in currently available stimuli, and align with trends in research practice (e.g., online sampling) within psychological science.

Rhyme as resonance in poetry comprehension: An expert-novice study.

Previous research has identified alliteration as a powerful device for investigating implicit memory effects. For example, alliterative phrases can provide retrieval cues that extend to a sublexical level and reactivate previous information that shares alliterative content (Lea et al., Psychological Science, 19[7], 709-716, 2008). But it is an open question if other surface forms might provide similar effects in line with these empirical findings, and in accord with writer intuitions. The present study examined whether rhyme produces analogous memory-reactivation effects, given the ubiquity of its use and endorsement of its power in a range of materials and experiences. We also examined whether the surface benefits attributed to rhyme might support anticipatory processes such as those traditionally examined with semantic content. In Experiment 1, participants exhibited faster recognition responses to previous poetic content as a function of rhyming cues. In Experiment 2, we recruited participants identified as experts on the study and use of rhyme, replicating the probe facilitations obtained in Experiment 1, but also revealing anticipations of imminent rhymes. The results are discussed in terms of implications for theories of memory-based text processing and of nonsemantic anticipatory processes during the reading of poetry, and perhaps for discourse experiences more generally.

Can confidence help account for and redress the effects of reading inaccurate information?

Being exposed to inaccurate information in fiction can negatively influence post-reading judgments and decisions. For example, people make more errors judging the validity of statements after reading stories containing related inaccurate as compared to related accurate assertions. While these effects have been demonstrated in a variety of studies, people's confidence in their post-reading judgments has received little attention. The current experiments examined whether exposure to accurate and inaccurate information embedded in fiction influences readers' confidence in judging the validity of related claims. Participants read an extended story containing accurate and inaccurate assertions about the world (Experiment 1a) or a control story omitting those assertions (Experiment 1b). Afterwards they judged the validity of single statements related to the critical assertions and provided confidence ratings for each judgment. While participants made more judgment errors after having read inaccurate assertions than after having read accurate assertions or stories without assertions, they were overall less confident in their incorrect as compared to correct judgments. Given the observed relationship between confidence and judgment accuracy, in Experiments 2 and 3 we tested whether allowing and instructing participants to withhold responses might reduce judgment errors. This withholding option reduced participants' incorrect and correct judgments, failing to specifically eliminate the negative consequences of exposure to inaccurate assertions. These findings are discussed with respect to accounts documenting the influence of inaccurate information, and highlight confidence as a relevant but understudied factor in previous empirical demonstrations of such effects.

Should social scientists be distanced from or engaged with the people they study?

This commentary focuses on two important contrasts in the behavioral sciences: (i) default versus nondefault study populations, where default samples have been used disproportionately (for psychology, the default is undergraduates at major research universities), and (ii) the adoption of a distant versus close (engaged) attitude toward study samples. Previous research has shown a strong correlation between these contrasts, where default samples and distant perspectives are the norm. Distancing is sometimes seen as necessary for objectivity, and an engaged orientation is sometimes criticized as biased, advocacy research, especially if the researcher shares a social group membership with the study population (e.g., a black male researcher studying black male students). The lack of diversity in study samples has been paralleled by a lack of diversity in the researchers themselves. The salience of default samples and distancing in prior research creates potential (and presumed) risk factors for engaged research with nondefault samples. However, a distant perspective poses risks as well, and particularly so for research with nondefault populations. We suggest that engaged research can usefully encourage attention to the study context and taking the perspective of study samples, both of which are good research practices. More broadly, we argue that social and educational sciences need skepticism, interestedness, and engagement, not distancing. Fostering an engaged perspective in research may also foster a more diverse population of social scientists.

Look it up: Online search reduces the problematic effects of exposures to inaccuracies.

People often reproduce information they read, which is beneficial when that information is accurate. Unfortunately, people are also often exposed to inaccurate information, with subsequent reproductions allowing for problematic decisions and behaviors. One empirically validated consequence of exposures to inaccuracies is that after reading falsehoods, participants are more likely to make errors answering related questions than if they previously read accurate statements, particularly for unfamiliar information. Interventions designed to attenuate these reproductions are often ineffective, at least as studied in tasks that restrict participants to generating answers based on text content and relevant prior knowledge. In the real world, however, people have access to outside resources to evaluate information. In three experiments, we tested whether affording the option to search for relevant online information following exposure to inaccurate statements would reduce reproductions of those inaccuracies on a post-reading task. Participants given the opportunity to search for information were less likely to reproduce inaccurate information and more likely to produce correct responses, in comparison to the performance of participants who were not allowed to search. We also tested whether warnings about potentially inaccurate information would encourage searches and inform responses. While warnings increased searching, additional reductions in inaccurate reproductions were not observed. Given the contingencies of many lab tasks, reproductions of inaccurate information might be overestimated. Resources available in the real world can offer useful supports for reducing the influence of and uncertainty associated with inaccurate exposures, consistent with contemporary accounts of memory and comprehension.

Reducing reliance on inaccurate information.

People learn from the texts that they read, but sometimes what they read is wrong. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals encode even obvious inaccuracies, at times relying on the misinformation to complete postreading tasks. In the present study, we investigated whether the influence of inaccurate information might be reduced by encouraging the retrieval of accurate knowledge. Participants read an extended text that contained both accurate and inaccurate assertions, after which they evaluated the validity of statements associated with those assertions. In general, participants made more mistakes in their evaluations of statements after having read inaccurate as compared to accurate assertions, offering evidence of the influence of misinformation. However, when participants were tasked with correcting inaccuracies during reading, their mistakes were substantially reduced. Encouraging the retrieval of accurate knowledge during reading can reduce the influence of misinformation. These findings are discussed with respect to the contributions of episodic traces and prior knowledge on learning, as well as to the conditions that support successful comprehension.

Pilgrims sailing the Titanic: plausibility effects on memory for misinformation.

People rely on information they read even when it is inaccurate (Marsh, Meade, & Roediger, Journal of Memory and Language 49:519-536, 2003), but how ubiquitous is this phenomenon? In two experiments, we investigated whether this tendency to encode and rely on inaccuracies from text might be influenced by the plausibility of misinformation. In Experiment 1, we presented stories containing inaccurate plausible statements (e.g., "The Pilgrims' ship was the Godspeed"), inaccurate implausible statements (e.g., . . . the Titanic), or accurate statements (e.g., . . . the Mayflower). On a subsequent test of general knowledge, participants relied significantly less on implausible than on plausible inaccuracies from the texts but continued to rely on accurate information. In Experiment 2, we replicated these results with the addition of a think-aloud procedure to elicit information about readers' noticing and evaluative processes for plausible and implausible misinformation. Participants indicated more skepticism and less acceptance of implausible than of plausible inaccuracies. In contrast, they often failed to notice, completely ignored, and at times even explicitly accepted the misinformation provided by plausible lures. These results offer insight into the conditions under which reliance on inaccurate information occurs and suggest potential mechanisms that may underlie reported misinformation effects.

Confidence as a metacognitive contributor to and consequence of misinformation experiences.

Exposures to inaccurate information can lead people to become confused about what is true, to doubt their understandings, and to rely on the ideas later. Recent work has begun to investigate the role of metacognition in these effects. We review research foregrounding confidence as an exemplar metacognitive contributor to misinformation experiences. Miscalibrations between confidence about what one knows, and the actual knowledge one possesses, can help explain why people might hold fast to misinformed beliefs even in the face of counterevidence. Miscalibrations can also emerge after brief exposures to new misinformation, allowing even obvious inaccuracies to influence subsequent performance. Evidence additionally suggests confidence may present a useful target for intervention, helping to encourage careful evaluation under the right conditions.

When do spatial abilities support student comprehension of STEM visualizations?

Spatial visualization abilities are positively related to performance on science, technology, engineering, and math tasks, but this relationship is influenced by task demands and learner strategies. In two studies, we illustrate these interactions by demonstrating situations in which greater spatial ability leads to problematic performance. In Study 1, chemistry students observed and explained sets of simultaneously presented displays depicting chemical phenomena at macroscopic and particulate levels of representation. Prior to viewing, the students were asked to make predictions at the macroscopic level. Eye movement analyses revealed that greater spatial ability was associated with greater focus on the prediction-relevant macroscopic level. Unfortunately, that restricted focus was also associated with lower-quality explanations of the phenomena. In Study 2, we presented the same displays but manipulated whether participants were asked to make predictions prior to viewing. Spatial ability was again associated with restricted focus, but only for students who completed the prediction task. Eliminating the prediction task encouraged attempts to integrate the displays that related positively to performance, especially for participants with high spatial ability. Spatial abilities can be recruited in effective or ineffective ways depending on alignments between the demands of a task and the approaches individuals adopt for completing that task.

Cause typicality and the continued influence effect.

A large body of research has focused on whether and how readers update their knowledge of events when an initial piece of causal information is corrected. These studies have indicated that corrections can reduce, but do not eliminate, readers' reliance on the initial cause when drawing inferences or making decisions about the events (i.e., the continued influence effect). Additional studies suggest that supplementing a correction with an alternative cause can further reduce reliance on discredited initial causes. In three experiments, we interrogated the importance of cause typicality for the generalizable utility of these correction strategies by manipulating the typicality of initial and alternative causes. We found evidence that participants showed greater reliance on a typical than an atypical initial cause both before and after correction, but no consistent evidence that this typicality impacted the effectiveness of the correction. Furthermore, the typicality of the alternative causes used to supplement a correction did not seem to matter with respect to updating. These results highlight the importance that characteristics of an initial cause can have for event encodings and corrections, identifying critical boundary conditions for understanding the effects of corrections on knowledge revision and the continued influence effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Literacy, cognitive function, and health: results of the LitCog study.

BACKGROUND: Emerging evidence suggests the relationship between health literacy and health outcomes could be explained by cognitive abilities. OBJECTIVE: To investigate to what degree cognitive skills explain associations between health literacy, performance on common health tasks, and functional health status. DESIGN: Two face-to-face, structured interviews spaced a week apart with three health literacy assessments and a comprehensive cognitive battery measuring 'fluid' abilities necessary to learn and apply new information, and 'crystallized' abilities such as background knowledge. SETTING: An academic general internal medicine practice and three federally qualified health centers in Chicago, Illinois. PATIENTS: Eight hundred and eighty-two English-speaking adults ages 55 to 74. MEASUREMENTS: Health literacy was measured using the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM), Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA), and Newest Vital Sign (NVS). Performance on common health tasks were globally assessed and categorized as 1) comprehending print information, 2) recalling spoken information, 3) recalling multimedia information, 4) dosing and organizing medication, and 5) healthcare problem-solving. RESULTS: Health literacy measures were strongly correlated with fluid and crystallized cognitive abilities (range: r=0.57 to 0.77, all p<0.001). Lower health literacy and weaker fluid and crystallized abilities were associated with poorer performance on healthcare tasks. In multivariable analyses, the association between health literacy and task performance was substantially reduced once fluid and crystallized cognitive abilities were entered into models (without cognitive abilities: ß= -28.9, 95 % Confidence Interval (CI) -31.4 to -26.4, p; with cognitive abilities: ß= -8.5, 95 % CI -10.9 to -6.0). LIMITATIONS: Cross-sectional analyses, English-speaking, older adults only. CONCLUSIONS: The most common measures used in health literacy studies are detecting individual differences in cognitive abilities, which may predict one's capacity to engage in self-care and achieve desirable health outcomes. Future interventions should respond to all of the cognitive demands patients face in managing health, beyond reading and numeracy.

Evaluative mindsets can protect against the influence of false information.

People are exposed to inaccurate claims and ideas every day from sources intended to inform, entertain, or do both. A large body of research has demonstrated that exposures to inaccurate statements, even when conveying obviously false ideas, can affect people's subsequent judgments. Contemporary accounts suggest that these effects may be due to people's failure to evaluate information during exposure, increasing the likelihood that false information will be encoded and available for retrieval on subsequent tasks. In three experiments, we investigated whether evaluative mindsets reduce the likelihood people are influenced by and use inaccurate statements, as well as encourage reliance on accurate understandings. In Experiment 1, participants who were instructed to engage in deliberate evaluation of potentially inaccurate statements reproduced fewer inaccurate ideas and produced more correct answers to post-reading questions than did participants who simply rated their interest in the statements. In Experiments 2 and 3, the same benefits were obtained even when participants were not consistently prompted to evaluate the statements. These results offer insight into when and how evaluation can encourage participants to rely on correct prior knowledge over presented inaccuracies, as well as what is required to establish and maintain such an evaluative mindset.

Evil geniuses: inferences derived from evidence and preferences.

Readers rely on descriptions of characters to generate expectations for future story events. However, readers also have preferences for how they want those events to unfold. Often, what texts imply about how characters will behave and what readers want characters to do converge on similar story events and narrative descriptions. But what are the processing consequences when expectations and preferences suggest competing possibilities? In three experiments, we explored this question utilizing short narrative texts. Each text included information designed to establish positive, negative, or neutral preferences toward characters, as well as behavioral descriptions that supported particular positive or negative character traits. In Experiments 1 and 2, when the valences of reader preferences and implied traits matched, participants overwhelmingly judged characters as likely to possess those traits. With mismatches, though, those judged likelihoods decreased in systematic ways. In Experiment 3, we observed that matches between preferences and implied traits also influenced reading times for story outcomes. These results outline how the inferences that guide narrative comprehension are influenced both by the descriptions that authors provide about characters and events, as well as by the emerging desires that readers develop for those characters and events.

Adults' and children's monitoring of story events in the service of comprehension.

When reading narratives, adults monitor shifts in time, space, characters, goals, and causation. Shifts in any of these dimensions affect both moment-by-moment reading and memory organization. The extant developmental literature suggests that middle school children have relatively sophisticated understandings of each of these dimensions but does not indicate whether they spontaneously monitor these dimensions during reading experiences. In four experiments, we examined the processing of event shifts by adults and children, using both an explicit verb-clustering task and a reading time task. The results indicate that middle school children's and adults' post-reading memory is organized using these dimensions but that children do not monitor dimensions during moment-by-moment reading in the same manner as adults. These differences were not a function of differentially difficult texts for children and adults, or between-group differences. The findings have implications for models of adult and child text processing and for understanding children's developing narrative comprehension.

Depending on My Mood: Mood-Driven Influences on Text Comprehension.

Reading comprehension is a critical component of success in educational settings. To date, research on text processing in educational and cognitive psychological domains has focused predominantly on cognitive influences on comprehension, and in particular, those influences that might be derived from particular tasks or strategies. However, there is growing interest in documenting the influences of emotional factors on the processes and products of text comprehension, because these factors are less likely to be associated with explicit reading strategies. The present study examines this issue by evaluating the degree to which mood can influence readers' processing of text. Participants in control, happy-induced, or sad-induced groups thought aloud while reading expository texts. Happy, sad, and neutral moods influenced the degree to which readers engaged in particular types of coherence-building processes in the service of comprehension. Although reading strategies clearly influence processing, understudied factors that are less explicitly goal-driven, such as mood, can similarly impact comprehension activity. These findings have important implications for the role of mood on reading instruction and evaluation.

Misinformed and unaware? Metacognition and the influence of inaccurate information.

The current study investigated the role of metacognition with respect to the consequences of exposures to inaccurate information. Previous work has consistently demonstrated that exposures to inaccuracies can confuse people and even encourage reliance on the falsehoods. We specifically examined whether people are aware of their likelihood of being influenced by inaccurate information, and whether engaging in metacognitive reflection is effective at reducing this influence. In three experiments, participants read a story containing false assertions about the world. In Experiment 1, we compared participants' estimated resistance to inaccurate information against the degree to which their subsequent judgments actually reflected an influence of previously read inaccuracies. Participants were generally unaware of their susceptibility to inaccurate information, demonstrated by a lack of calibration between estimated and actual resistance. Their judgments consistently revealed an influence of previously read inaccuracies. In Experiment 2, we applied a metacognitive reflection task intended to encourage evaluation while reading. Participants who completed this task made fewer judgment errors after having read inaccurate statements than did participants who did not engage in reflection. Experiment 3 replicated these effects with a larger sample, and showed benefits of reflection for calibrations between people's estimated resistance and their actual performance. The accumulated findings highlight the importance of metacognitive considerations for understanding and addressing oft-reported, problematic effects of exposures to inaccuracies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Differential effects of pressure on social contagion of memory.

Collaboration can support performance on a variety of tasks, but recent projects have indicated that group collaborations can also be associated with memory decrements. For example, when people discuss ideas, any shared inaccurate information can be used by group members to complete subsequent tasks. Across two experiments, we examined whether this social contagion is influenced by performance pressures that regularly emerge during group interactions. In Experiment 1, participants under individual-directed pressure, goal-directed pressure, or control conditions studied word lists before completing a collaborative recall with a confederate partner who occasionally recalled incorrect words. We examined whether partner-produced inaccuracies contaminated participants' memories for the list contents on a subsequent individual recall. Goal-directed pressure, focused on monitoring partner accuracy, facilitated subsequent individual recall, as demonstrated by reduced reproductions of partner-generated inaccuracies. In contrast, individual-directed pressure, focused on appearing competent, resulted in greater use of those inaccuracies. Experiment 2 ruled out that the benefits associated with goal-directed pressure were solely due to warning participants about the possibility of social contagion. These results demonstrate that different instantiations of pressure can help or hinder memory-related performance in collaborative settings. Under the right conditions, pressure can help overcome the effects of exposure to inaccurate information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Representational flexibility and specificity following spatial descriptions of real-world environments.

Current theories are mixed with regard to the nature of mental representations following spatial description reading. Whereas some findings argue that individuals' representations are invariant following text-based, map-based, or first-person experience, other studies have suggested that representations can also exhibit considerable flexibility. In the current project we investigated the influences of spatial description perspectives and depictions on the nature of mental representations. In Experiment 1, participants exhibited more flexibility following survey, compared to route, spatial descriptions. With extended study time, though, flexibility following route descriptions increased. In Experiment 2, complementary maps further enhanced flexibility for route-based descriptions. Interestingly, increased exposure to these maps actually reduced flexibility following survey descriptions. These results demonstrate that the nature of our spatial mental representations depends upon a variety of factors; delineating these factors is critical for resolving debates concerning the malleable and invariant characteristics of spatial memory.

Sweet silent thought: alliteration and resonance in poetry comprehension.

Poetic devices like alliteration can heighten readers' aesthetic experiences and enhance poets' recall of their epic pieces. The effects of such devices on memory for and appreciation of poetry are well known; however, the mechanisms underlying these effects are not yet understood. We used current theories of language comprehension as a framework for understanding how alliteration affects comprehension processes. Across three experiments, alliterative cues reactivated readers' memories for previous information when it was phonologically similar to the cue. These effects were obtained when participants read aloud and when they read silently, and with poetry and prose. The results support everyday intuitions about the effects of poetry and aesthetics, and explain the nature of such effects. These findings extend the scope of general memory models by indicating their capacity to explain the influence of nonsemantic discourse features.