Don’t believe everything you hear: Routine validation of audiovisual information in children and adults

Abstract

Previous research has shown that the validation of incoming information during language comprehension is a fast, efficient, and routine process (epistemic monitoring). Previous research on this topic has focused on epistemic monitoring during reading. The present study extended this research by investigating epistemic monitoring of audiovisual information. In a Stroop-like paradigm, participants (Experiment 1: adults; Experiment 2: 10-year-old children) responded to the probe words correct and false by keypress after the presentation of auditory assertions that could be either true or false with respect to concurrently presented pictures. Results provide evidence for routine validation of audiovisual information. Moreover, the results show a stronger and more stable interference effect for children compared with adults.

Source credibility modulates the validation of implausible information

“…Richter et al (2009) found this interaction pattern in two experiments with true versus false statements. Further experiments have yielded epistemic Stroop effects for assertions of varying plausibility (Isberner & Richter, 2013) with belief-consistent and belief-inconsistent statements (Gilead et al, 2018), a nonlinguistic task (judging the color of a word; Isberner & Richter, 2013), a nonevaluative probe task (Isberner & Richter, 2014), and audiovisual information (Piest et al, 2018). These studies provide broad evidence for validation as a nonstrategic, involuntary process and for the assumption that validation produces implicit plausibility judgments and are more than mere disruptions of comprehension.…”

“…However, research systematically mapping out the conditions that affect validation is fairly new. The conditions examined to date include the contributions of world knowledge and contextual information (e.g., Isberner & Richter, 2014;van Moort, Koornneef, & van den Broek, 2018;Williams, Cook, & O'Brien, 2018), individual differences in working memory capacity and access to world knowledge (Singer & Doering, 2014), individual differences in beliefs (Gilead, Selal, & Marid, 2018), developmental influences (Piest, Isberner, & Richter, 2018), text genre (such as fantasy text: Creer, Cook, & O'Brien, 2018), and recency of text information (Guéraud, Walsh, Cook, & O'Brien, 2018).…”

Using Internet videos to learn about controversies: Evaluation and integration of multiple and multimodal documents by primary school students

“…Recent evidence suggests that automatic validation of information takes place when a learner is presented with information from audiovisual modes, as previously established with textual information (Piest, Isberner, & Richter, 2018). Piest et al (2018) used a Stroop task to examine epistemic validation of audiovisual information. Participants saw an image and listened to a statement that was congruent, or not, with what was represented visually, and they immediately saw the words "Correct" or "False".…”

The Role of Source Credibility in the Validation of Information Depends on the Degree of (Im-)Plausibility

“…In this context, plausibility can be defined as the "acceptability or likelihood of a situation or a sentence describing it" (Matsuki et al, 2011, p. 926). Experiments with reaction times based on the epistemic Stroop paradigm in which false, belief-inconsistent, or implausible statements slow down affirmative responses in an unrelated task provide strong evidence for routine validation with various types of linguistic and audio-visual stimuli (e.g., Gilead et al, 2019;Isberner & Richter, 2013Piest et al, 2018;Richter et al, 2009).…”