Updating accounts following a correction of misinformation

Abstract

The research examined whether corrected misinformation influences anaphoric inferences people make during subsequent reading. Participants read a set of corrected-misinformation and no-misinformation stories and made judgments about probe words that were either appropriate or inappropriate anaphoric referents. At a short delay, the results showed less activation for appropriate referents that were corrections of misinformation. At longer delays, the activation of appropriate referents showed no significant difference, but misinformation probes were more quickly recognized than were inappropriate referents that were incidentally mentioned in control story versions. In all conditions, appropriate referents showed more activation than inappropriate ones. The results suggest that corrected misinformation can continue to influence on-line reading processes.