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Special Coverage
The Effects of Repetition on Belief: The Role of Prior Knowledge and Development (SYM6)
Lisa Fazio (Vanderbilt University)
Summary by Laura Mickes, Digital Content Editor
This recap is part of a special series of session summaries
from the Psychonomic Society's 61st Annual Meeting. To read the rest of the series, click here.
Even Young Kids Fall For It
Lisa Fazio (@lkfazio), one of the Psychonomic Society’s Digital Associate Editors, is the recipient of this year’s Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences Early Career Impact Award. In her talk, she discussed her research on how repetition changes the perceived truth of a statement. Her research builds on Hasher and colleagues’ work on the “Illusory Truth Effect.” In these experiments, participants answer a series of questions about general knowledge to check their knowledge. Later, they are exposed again to some of the statements and then take part in the truth phase, indicating whether the statements are true or false. For known and unknown truth statements, repetition increases belief in the false statements. Even though they once knew the right answer (see the screenshot below)! And it also happens with unplausible statements!
Preliminary data suggests that less plausible items get an even bigger boost with repetition than plausible items. Three proposed explanations of why repetition might increase perceived truth are that: Familiarity increases repetition. Processing fluency (i.e., the processing is easier) increases repetition. A formed cohesive network between statements increases repetition.
Whatever the reason, how do people learn what is associated with truthfulness? Fazio and colleagues proposed two alternative explanations: We implicitly learn that when statements that are true, they are more familiar, processed earlier, and form a cohesive network – if so, then kids should have it. We use metacognition for cues that signal truthfulness – if so, then young kids shouldn’t have it.
Illusory truth effect experiment with 5-year-old participants, 10-year-old participants, and adult participants. If 5-year-old participants have increased belief in repeated statements, that will support the first alternative explanation. If they don’t, that will support the second alternative explanation. Across all three age groups, there was an effect of repetition. Therefore, the link between repetition and truth is learned early, without metacognition. I’ll say that again, for the sake of repetition, the link between repetition and truth is learned early, without metacognition.
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