Effects of Inconsistent Information on Text Processing: Evidence for Comprehension Monitoring

Modifications in processing indicate that the subjects monitored their comprehension as they were reading, evaluating whether the ideas expressed in the text were consistent with one another, and that subjects spent more time on sentences containing information that conflicted with information presented elsewhere.

Abstract

Expository passages containing either main point inconsistencies, detail inconsistencies, or no inconsistencies were presented sentence by sentence to 90 college students.Subjects read through the passages at their own pace and were encouraged to reread previous sections of text whenever they wished.As expected, subjects spent more time on sentences containing information that conflicted with information presented elsewhere, and they looked back more often at inconsistent sentences.These modifications in processing indicate that the subjects monitored their comprehension as they were reading, actively evaluating whether the ideas expressed in the text were consistent with one another.Several postreading measures provided additional support for this conclusion.The relationship between reading behavior and subsequent identification of the inconsistencies was also examined.Large individual differences were found both in processing strategies and in confusion detection.