Kemp, P.L. orcid.org/0000-0002-2200-7735, Loaiza, V.M. orcid.org/0000-0002-5000-7089, Kelley, C.M. et al. (1 more author) (2024) Correcting fake news headlines after repeated exposure: memory and belief accuracy in younger and older adults. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 9 (1). 55. ISSN 2365-7464
Abstract
The efficacy of fake news corrections in improving memory and belief accuracy may depend on how often adults see false information before it is corrected. Two experiments tested the competing predictions that repeating fake news before corrections will either impair or improve memory and belief accuracy. These experiments also examined whether fake news exposure effects would differ for younger and older adults due to age-related differences in the recollection of contextual details. Younger and older adults read real and fake news headlines that appeared once or thrice. Next, they identified fake news corrections among real news headlines. Later, recognition and cued recall tests assessed memory for real news, fake news, if corrections occurred, and beliefs in retrieved details. Repeating fake news increased detection and remembering of corrections, correct real news retrieval, and erroneous fake news retrieval. No age differences emerged for detection of corrections, but younger adults remembered corrections better than older adults. At test, correct fake news retrieval for earlier-detected corrections was associated with better real news retrieval. This benefit did not differ between age groups in recognition but was greater for younger than older adults in cued recall. When detected corrections were not remembered at test, repeated fake news increased memory errors. Overall, both age groups believed correctly retrieved real news more than erroneously retrieved fake news to a similar degree. These findings suggest that fake news repetition effects on subsequent memory accuracy depended on age differences in recollection-based retrieval of fake news and that it was corrected.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line o the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Fake news; Misinformation corrections; Memory updating; Beliefs; Cognitive aging |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Sep 2024 07:50 |
Last Modified: | 25 Feb 2025 11:39 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s41235-024-00585-3 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:216650 |