This study examined the role of source credibility in the validation of factual information embedded in short narratives. In a self-paced reading experiment, we tested the assumption that the degree of (im-)plausibility determines the extent that source credibility affects validation during comprehension. We used reading times of target and…

Due to the increasing educational use of the Internet, children in elementary school need to critically evaluate source information to judge the trustworthiness of information. Studies with adult readers show that sourcing prompts and mutually exclusive claims in reading materials promote the use of source information. However, little is known…

In two experiments we systematically examined whether contradictions between two web pages--of which one was commercially biased as stated in an "about us" section--stimulated university students' consideration of source information both during and after reading. In Experiment 1 "about us" information of the web pages was…

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…

Past research has shown that readers often fail to notice conflicts in text. In our present study we investigated whether accessing information from multiple documents instead of a single document might alleviate this problem by motivating readers to integrate information. We further tested whether this effect would be moderated by source…