Reducing Interference From Misconceptions: The Role of Inhibition in Knowledge Revision

The goal of the present set of experiments was to identify the conditions under which readers evoked prepotent-response inhibition to prevent interference from reactivated misconceptions. In Experiment 1, participants with varying inhibition ability read refutation texts that addressed common misconceptions and control texts. Overall, participants read target sentences that stated the correct idea faster in the refutation texts than in the control texts, suggesting that refutation texts were sufficient to reduce interference from misconceptions and facilitate knowledge revision. In the control texts, participants with higher inhibition ability read target sentences slower than participants with lower inhibition ability, suggesting that participants with higher inhibition ability may have engaged in some extra processing to cope with the interference from misconceptions. In Experiment 2, we used a probe-verification paradigm to evaluate the extent to which readers' misconceptions were indeed reactivated during reading of the control texts. Results showed no evidence of reactivation in the refutation texts, but misconceptions continued to be reactivated in the control texts. Taken together, these findings suggest that prepotent-response inhibition may be one means by which readers manage interference from reactivated misconceptions from prior knowledge. Educational Impact and Implications Statement This set of experiments suggests that readers evoked inhibition during reading to manage interference from reactivated misconceptions when texts do not refute or explain those misconceptions. Specifically, higher-inhibition readers showed greater slowdowns in processing compared with lower-inhibition readers when their misconceptions were reactivated during reading, which suggests that higher-inhibition readers may have engaged in extra processing aimed at resolving the conflict that arises from reactivating misconceptions. Given growing evidence that executive functions (EF) such as inhibition may be malleable, the present findings have implications for the potential of training EF to strengthen readers' abilities to effectively respond to conflicting information.