Otero, J., & Kintsch, W. (1992). Failures to detect contraditions in a text: What readers believe versus what they read. Psychological Science, 3(4), 229-235.

Otero, J.; Kintsch, W.

1992

Otero, J., & Kintsch, W. (1992). Failures to detect contraditions in a text: What readers believe versus what they read. Psychological Science, 3(4), 229-235.

geen

Subjects read brief paragraphs containing contradictory statements. Many of the subjects failed to notice the contradiction. On a subsequent recall test, nondetectors frequently either recalled only one or neither of the contradictory statements or explained the contradiction away. The construction-integration model of discourse comprehension is used to simulate these results. Failures to detect contradictions are accounted for by assuming that nondetectors believe too strongly in the global text interpretations they create or in their prior beliefs. In the model, this means that their comprehension processes are normal, except that one normal component of comprehension—differential weighting of important statements—is exaggerated.

Subjects failed tot detect 40,3% of the contradictions. If a contradiction was detected, the reader could either respond appropriately or engage in some inappropriate repair procedure. For both detectors and nondetectors, the amount recalled from a sentence decreased rfrom the beginning to the end of the paragraph, but while there was a significant decrease in the mound recalled by nondetectors as a function of serial position, no clear-cut serial position function was obtained for detectors, primarily because of the tendency of those readers who detected a contradiction in the text to report it.

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