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.

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) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Examining instructional practices in news media literacy: shifts in instruction and co-construction

Purpose

As technology enables the rapid spread of mis- and disinformation, a critical challenge for scholars and practitioners involves building student’s news media literacy (NML), a subset of media literacy education centered around journalism. This paper aims to offer a case study of secondary civics classrooms that use NML lessons and current events in their curricula, providing an empirical account of teaching techniques being used to support students' dispositions and practices.

Design/methodology/approach

This multiple case study investigates three secondary classes taught by two teachers. Data collection methods included observations, field notes and interviews with the teachers. Discourse and actions were analyzed by probing the participant structures and means of classroom management.

Findings

The findings highlight instructional techniques used by both teachers which consisted of instructionist and constructivist approaches, with informative shifts observed between the two. The teachers used instructionist methods when transmitting declarative knowledge (such as key definitions), and constructivist methods when working with students to consider more abstract concepts and developing news stories.

Originality/value

The demand for NML and associated pedagogy is increasing given awareness of the rapid spread and problematic influence of mis-and disinformation. There is a critical need for describing teachers’ implementations of these pedagogies, given calls for enacting NML into public policy despite limited awareness of the ways they actually unfold in classrooms. The current project shows how instructionist and constructivist frames prove helpful for understanding instructional practices, and for contemplating anticipated designs of NML pedagogy in classrooms.

Can’t We Just Disregard Fake News? The Consequences of Exposure to Inaccurate Information

People routinely encounter inaccurate information, from fake news designed to confuse audiences, to communications with inadvertent mistakes, to stories made up to entertain readers. The hope is that these inaccuracies can be easily ignored, exerting little influence on our thoughts and actions. Unfortunately, being exposed to inaccuracies leads to problematic consequences. After reading inaccurate statements, readers exhibit clear effects of those contents on their decisions and problem-solving. This occurs even when readers possess appropriate prior knowledge to evaluate and reject the inaccuracies. Exposure to inaccurate information leads to confusion about what is true, doubt about accurate understandings, and subsequent reliance on falsehoods. Interventions and technologies designed to address these effects by encouraging critical evaluation can support effective comprehension and learning.

The Consequences of Reading Inaccurate Information

We are regularly confronted with statements that are inaccurate, sometimes obviously so. Unfortunately, people can be influenced by and rely upon inaccurate information, engaging in less critical evaluation than might be hoped. Empirical studies have consistently demonstrated that even when people should know better, reading inaccurate information can affect their performance on subsequent tasks. What encourages people’s encoding and use of false statements? The current article outlines how reliance on inaccurate information is a predictable consequence of the routine cognitive processes associated with memory, problem solving, and comprehension. This view helps identify conditions under which inaccurate information is more or less likely to influence subsequent decisions. These conditions are informative in the consideration of information-design approaches and instructional methods intended to support critical thinking.

Dynamic Text Comprehension

Reading is one of the most complex and uniquely human of cognitive activities. Our understanding of the processes and factors involved in text comprehension is quite impressive, but it also is fragmented, with a proliferation of “mini-theories” for specific components that in reality are intertwined and interact with one another. Theories of dynamic text comprehension (DTC) aim to capture the integration of these components. They depict reading comprehension as an ongoing process involving fluctuations in the activation of concepts as the reader proceeds through the text, resulting in a gradually emerging interpretation of the material. Features of texts and characteristics of the reader jointly and interactively affect these fluctuations, influencing and being influenced by the reader's understanding and memory of what is read. We illustrate the DTC approach by describing one theory, called the Landscape model, and summarize how its simulations match empirical data. We conclude with some implications of the DTC framework for basic and applied reading research.

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: β= -28.9, 95 % Confidence Interval (CI) -31.4 to -26.4, p; with cognitive abilities: β= -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.

Comparative analysis of print and multimedia health materials: a review of the literature

OBJECTIVE

Evaluate the evidence regarding the relative effectiveness of multimedia and print as modes of dissemination for patient education materials; examine whether development of these materials addressed health literacy.

METHODS

A structured literature review utilizing Medline, PsycInfo, and the Cumulative Index to the Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), supplemented by reference mining.

RESULTS

Of 738 studies screened, 30 effectively compared multimedia and print materials. Studies offered 56 opportunities for assessing the effect of medium on various outcomes (e.g., knowledge). In 30 instances (54%), no difference was noted between multimedia and print in terms of patient outcomes. Multimedia led to better outcomes vs. print in 21 (38%) comparisons vs. 5 (9%) instances for print. Regarding material development, 12 studies (40%) assessed readability and 5 (17%) involved patients in tool development.

CONCLUSIONS

Multimedia appears to be a promising medium for patient education; however, the majority of studies found that print and multimedia performed equally well in practice. Few studies involved patients in material development, and less than half assessed the readability of materials.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Future research should focus on comparing message-equivalent tools and assessing their effect on behavioral outcomes. Material development should include explicit attention to readability and patient input.

Caffeine enhances real-world language processing: evidence from a proofreading task

Caffeine has become the most prevalently consumed psychostimulant in the world, but its influences on daily real-world functioning are relatively unknown. The present work investigated the effects of caffeine (0 mg, 100 mg, 200 mg, 400 mg) on a commonplace language task that required readers to identify and correct 4 error types in extended discourse: simple local errors (misspelling 1- to 2-syllable words), complex local errors (misspelling 3- to 5-syllable words), simple global errors (incorrect homophones), and complex global errors (incorrect subject-verb agreement and verb tense). In 2 placebo-controlled, double-blind studies using repeated-measures designs, we found higher detection and repair rates for complex global errors, asymptoting at 200 mg in low consumers (Experiment 1) and peaking at 400 mg in high consumers (Experiment 2). In both cases, covariate analyses demonstrated that arousal state mediated the relationship between caffeine consumption and the detection and repair of complex global errors. Detection and repair rates for the other 3 error types were not affected by caffeine consumption. Taken together, we demonstrate that caffeine has differential effects on error detection and repair as a function of dose and error type, and this relationship is closely tied to caffeine's effects on subjective arousal state. These results support the notion that central nervous system stimulants may enhance global processing of language-based materials and suggest that such effects may originate in caffeine-related right hemisphere brain processes. Implications for understanding the relationships between caffeine consumption and real-world cognitive functioning are discussed.

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.

Discourse processing-examining our everyday language experiences

Studies of discourse processing focus on the ways in which readers and listeners comprehend language. The linguistic segments of interest to the field tend to be larger than sound, word, or sentence-level units; they include the books and conversational communications that comprise our everyday cognitive and social interactions. The current review focuses on discourse comprehension (specifically text processing), highlighting three core issues of primary interest to the research field. First, we outline the particular elements that make up naturalistic discourse activity. Second, we identify potential interactions among the elements, and how investigations of these interactions have resulted in influential frameworks for the field. Finally, we examine contemporary work (both theoretical and applied) that might further enhance current accounts of discourse processing. As appropriate, the review includes references to relevant empirical research outlining the processes that guide, and are guided by, our discourse experiences. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Literacy and learning in health care

The relationship between literacy and health outcomes are well documented in adult medicine, yet specific causal pathways are not entirely clear. Despite an incomplete understanding of the problem, numerous interventions have already been implemented with variable success. Many of those who proposed earlier strategies assumed the problem to originate from reading difficulties only. Given the timely need for more effective interventions, it is of increasing importance to reconsider the meaning of health literacy to advance our conceptual understanding of the problem and how best to respond. One potentially effective approach might involve recognizing the known associations between a larger set of cognitive and psychosocial abilities with functional literacy skills. Here we review the current health literacy definition and literature and draw on relevant research from the fields of education, cognitive science, and psychology. In this framework, a research agenda is proposed that considers an individual's "health-learning capacity," which refers to the broad constellation of cognitive and psychosocial skills from which patients or family members must draw to effectively promote, protect, and manage their own or a child's health. This new, related concept will lead, ideally, to more effective ways of thinking about health literacy interventions, including the design of health-education materials, instructional strategies, and the delivery of health care services to support patients and families across the life span.

Those voices in your head: activation of auditory images during reading

Auditory imagery experiences (AIEs) occur when readers simulate character voices while reading. This project assessed how familiarity with voice and narrative contexts influences activation of AIEs. Participants listened to dialogs between two characters. Participants then read scripts with the characters, half that had been previously listened to and half that were new. During reading, participants were interrupted with an auditory recognition task, with probes presented in voices that either matched or mismatched the character associated with the current line of dialog. Faster responses to matching than mismatching voices were consistently obtained for familiar scripts, providing evidence for AIEs. Transfer to unfamiliar scripts only occurred after extended experience with character voices. These findings define factors that influence activation of speaker voice during reading, with implications for understanding the nature of linguistic representations across presentation modalities.

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.

To err is human: patient misinterpretations of prescription drug label instructions

OBJECTIVE

To examine the nature and cause of patients' misunderstanding common dosage instructions on prescription drug container labels.

METHODS

In-person cognitive interviews including a literacy assessment were conducted among 395 patients at one of three primary care clinics in Shreveport, Louisiana, Jackson, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois. Patients were asked to read and demonstrate understanding of dosage instructions for five common prescription medications. Correct understanding was determined by a panel of blinded physician raters reviewing patient verbatim responses. Qualitative methods were employed to code incorrect responses and generate themes regarding causes for misunderstanding.

RESULTS

Rates of misunderstanding for the five dosage instructions ranged from 8 to 33%. Patients with low literacy had higher rates of misunderstanding compared to those with marginal or adequate literacy (63% versus 51% versus 38%, p<0.001). The 374 (19%) incorrect responses were qualitatively reviewed. Six themes were derived to describe the common causes for misunderstanding: label language, complexity of instructions, implicit versus explicit dosage intervals, presence of distractors, label familiarity, and attentiveness to label instructions.

CONCLUSION

Misunderstanding dosage instructions on prescription drug labels is common. While limited literacy is associated with misunderstanding, the instructions themselves are awkwardly phrased, vague, and unnecessarily difficult.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Prescription drug labels should use explicit dosing intervals, clear and simple language, within a patient-friendly label format. Health literacy and cognitive factors research should be consulted.

Character movement and the representation of space during narrative comprehension

Traditional research on situation models has examined the accessibility of locations and objects during narrative experiences. These studies have described a ubiquitous gradient effect: Spatial locations and objects in reader focus are more accessible than locations farther from this focus, with accessibility decreasing as a function of distance. How might readers' expectations about character movement, beyond information about spatial locations, additionally affect this accessibility gradient? In two experiments, we investigated whether reader expectations for character movement impact the accessibility of spatial information from memory. In Experiment 1, participants read stories that described characters moving in either a unidirectional or a random pattern through a learned environment. In Experiment 2, characters moved forward in a unidirectional way or backtracked through previously explored rooms. The results suggest that reader expectations for character movement can influence the accessibility of spatial information. Such expectations play a critical role in processes of narrative comprehension.

Life cycle optimisation for highway best management practices

Highway runoff can cause a number of water quantity and quality problems. Stormwater management systems for highways have been developed based on a fast drainage for large storm situations. Non-point source pollution from highway runoff is a growing water quality concern. Stormwater quality control needs to be integrated into highway drainage design and operation to reduce the stormwater impacts on the receiving water. A continuous simulation/optimisation model for analysing integrated highway best management practices (BMPs) is presented. This model can evaluate the life cycle performance of infiltration and/or storage oriented highway BMPs. It can be directly integrated with spreadsheet optimisation tools to find the least cost options for implementing BMPs throughout a specified life cycle.

Interactive Dimensions in the Construction of Mental Representations for Text

To detail the structure and format of memory for texts, researchers have examined whether readers monitor separate text dimensions for space, time, and characters. The authors proposed that the interactivity between these individual dimensions may be as critical to the construction of complex mental models as the discrete dimensions themselves. In the present experiments, participants read stories in which characters were described as traveling from a start to a final location. During movement between locations, characters engaged in activities that could take either a long or short amount of time to complete. Results indicate that accessibility for the spatial locations was a function of the passage of time. The authors interpret this as evidence that the interactive nature of text dimensions affects the structure of representations in memory.

Out of sight, out of mind: occlusion and the accessibility of information in narrative comprehension

Do readers encode the perceptual perspectives of characters during narrative comprehension? To address this question, we conducted two experiments using stories that sometimes described situations in which certain information was occluded from the protagonists' views. We generated two related hypotheses concerning the potential impact of occlusion events on text representations. One, the event boundary hypothesis, suggested that any salient narrative event would reduce the accessibility of prior story information. The second, the perceptual availability hypothesis, suggested that accessibility would decrease most for information no longer visible to story protagonists. In Experiment 1, the participants were slowest to respond to verification questions that asked about occluded information. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that this effect did not extend to other, nonoccluded information. These results suggest that readers encode text information from the perceptual perspective of story protagonists. This is consistent with recent perceptual symbol views of language comprehension.