Misinformation often continues to influence people's reasoning even after it has been corrected. Therefore, an important aim of applied cognition research is to identify effective measures to counter misinformation. One frequently recommended but hitherto insufficiently tested strategy is source discreditation, that is, attacking the credibility…

Episodic retrieval plays a functional-adaptive role in supporting divergent creative thinking, the ability to creatively combine different pieces of information. However, the same constructive memory process that provides this benefit can also lead to memory errors. Prior behavioral work has shown that there is a positive correlation between the…

Background and Objectives: Short video platforms have become one of the most common methods for disseminating medical information on social media. We analysed gastrointestinal (GI)-related content on TikTok, focusing on the creators' background, patterns of content utilisation and overall content quality and understandability, using validated…

One strategy for developing science literacy and scientific literacy in young children is through published trade books. To better understand how science literacy and scientific literacy may be represented in elementary classrooms, we investigated children's books that explore science concepts. Specifically, we examined high-quality science trade…

In the educational context, there are numerous "neuromyths" about how findings from neuroscience can be used to improve teaching and learning. International research has shown that the majority of teachers tend to believe in these and use them in the classroom. Since the belief in neuromyths might not enhance or even have adverse effects…

Conspiracy theories (CTs) are spectacular narratives, widely spread, that pose societal threats. We test whether CTs might be linguistically creative products, which would facilitate their transmission and thereby account for their widespread popularity. We analyzed nominal compounds (e.g., "mind control," "carbon dioxide"; N =…

Fighting false information, propaganda, open lies, rumors, misinformation, and disinformation by attacking it directly and challenging it is the dominant strategy for dealing with false beliefs (Lazer et al., 2018; Maseri et al., 2020; Van Bavel et al., 2021), and it is an important one. Refuting falsity is crucial. At the same time, there are…

The International Literacy Day 2023 was the first after the launch the text generating artificial intelligence ChatGPT. This was the reason for a Literacy Promptathon that allows users to learn how to handle text and image generation. The International Literacy Day media coverage for the first time touched on the question of AI generated text. One…

The rise of social media platforms and subsequent lack of traditional gatekeeping mechanisms have enabled the proliferation of scientific disinformation. Users attempting to properly evaluate scientific information and disinformation are immensely obstructed by media communication mechanisms such as filter bubbles and echo chambers. Given the…

Misinformation can have severe negative effects on people's decisions, behaviors, and on society at large. This creates a need to develop and evaluate educational interventions that prepare people to recognize and respond to misinformation. We systematically review 107 articles describing educational interventions across various lines of research.…

For nearly a decade, concerns about misinformation influencing U.S. elections have grown. As modern elections are increasingly characterized by overwhelming amounts of information, trust in the media is at an all-time low, with people across the political spectrum reporting low confidence in the mass media's ability to report the news "fully,…

This study interviewed adolescents about their exposure to and perceptions of substance-related social media content and substance use prevention messages. Participants (analytic sample N = 30, age 14-18 years, in CA, USA, 40% male) were recruited from Instagram and Facebook for online semi-structured interviews. An interview transcript coding…

Infographics are visual storytelling techniques used to communicate complex information. However, infographics can be misleading if they are not created ethically. When universities teach how to create infographics, they often do so without emphasizing the ethical issues underlying infographics. To address this gap, we designed a study to educate…

Misinformation can profoundly impact an individual's attitudes--sometimes even after the misinformation has been corrected. In two preregistered experiments (N[subscript 1] = 355, N[subscript 2] = 725), we investigated whether individual differences in the ability and motivation to process information thoroughly influence the impact of…

Misinformation, or incorrect information, in all forms is a recent and widespread threat. While information literacy methods, such as the CRAAP method and the RADAR framework, more research is necessary to determine prevalence and effectiveness of these methods. In this mixed-methods survey, I evaluated Gen Z information seekers' experience with…