If it’s hard to read, it changes how long you do it: Reading time as an explanation for perceptual fluency effects on judgment

Abstract

Perceptual manipulations, such as changes in font type or figure-ground contrast, have been shown to increase judgments of difficulty or effort related to the presented material. Previous theory has suggested that this is the result of changes in online processing or perhaps the post-hoc influence of perceived difficulty recalled at the time of judgment. These two experiments seek to examine by which mechanism (or both) the fluency effect is produced. Results indicate that disfluency does in fact change in situ reading behavior, and this change significantly mediates judgments. Eye movement analyses corroborate this suggestion and observe a difference in how people read a disfluent presentation. These findings support the notion that readers are using perceptual cues in their reading experiences to change how they interact with the material, which in turn produces the observed biases.

The limited use of the fluency heuristic: Converging evidence across different procedures

“…Recent research by Sanchez and Jaeger (2015) additionally showed that perceived fluency (as measured by subjective ratings of reading difficulty) did not relate to fluency-manipulation-based effects, whereas reading times (as an objective measure) did. Moreover, subjective and objective measures of fluency were uncorrelated.…”

“…In other words, if researchers tap the wrong subprocess (or too few), not much can be learned about subjective fluency. Correspondingly, a large body of research has shown that subjectively experienced fluency might differ substantially from objective measures (see Greifeneder, Bless, & Pham, 2010;Hilbig, 2012;Newell & Shanks, 2007;Sanchez & Jaeger, 2015;Scholl, Greifeneder, & Bless, 2014;Unkelbach & Greifeneder, 2013;Whittlesea & Leboe, 2003).…”

Fostering Analytic Metacognitive Processes and Reducing Overconfidence by Disfluency: The Role of Contrast Effects

“…In previous research, there is evidence for the fluency effect on control: Studies have found longer reading or study times for disfluent texts compared with fluent texts (e.g., Eitel & Kühl, ; Miele & Molden, , Experiment 3; Sanchez & Jaeger, , Experiments 1 and 2). In these studies, fluency was manipulated by font type, which is a common manipulation of processing fluency (Alter & Oppenheimer, ).…”

Instructor accents in online education and their effect on learning and attitudes

“…As mentioned above, there is some evidence that the simple manipulation of typesetting from a more perceptually fluent (i.e,, Times New Roman) to a less perceptually fluent font (i.e,, Mistral) can have negative impacts on attitudes towards information described in text, even though readers demonstrate equivalent levels of understanding (Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley & Eyre, 2007;Sanchez & Jaeger, 2015;Song & Schwarz, 2008). Thus, although readers do comprehend the texts equally, when asked to report responses to questions like 'How easy was this text to read?…”

“…Critical to the point here is that this negative appraisal of the simple textual decoding process also bleeds over and affects attitudes towards the conceptual information in the text. For example, participants who received a less perceptually fluent text also reported that the procedural task described in the text (making a Sushi roll) would take more time to complete and/or be more difficult to construct, than other participants who received the same exact text, albeit in a more perceptually fluent and easier to read font (Sanchez & Jaeger, 2015;Song & Schwarz, 2008). Further, other research examining perceptual fluency also suggests that perceptually disfluent text presentations also reduce the ability of learners to accurately gauge or predict their learning (Rawson & Dunlosky, 2002;Rhodes & Castel, 2008;Undorf & Erdfelder, 2015).…”