Thinking dispositions moderate adolescent readers’ mental models of conflicting sport information

Abstract

Readers’ prior beliefs can slant their mental models of conflicting information in favor of perspectives and standpoints that support them. Previous research suggests that reader's (meta-)cognitive resources might protect them from belief biases in the mental representation of controversial textual information. Since critical thinking dispositions involve the willingness to analyze evidence independently of beliefs and are associated with the propensity to seek new evidence, they are likely to protect readers from the biasing effects of beliefs. This study, therefore, investigated how critical thinking dispositions remediate belief biases in adolescents’ mental models of controversial information. Eighty-five adolescent readers read two documents that presented arguments for and against their favourite football teams. The strength of their situationmodel and text-base representations were measured by a recognition task. The results revealed that adolescents’ mental models of the controversial sport information were slanted towards the text that communicated belief-congruent information. The results further revealed that critical thinking dispositions moderated the effects of prior beliefs on the mental models that adolescent readers constructed of the conflicting information. The findings provide support for the 2-step model of validation, according to which critical thinking dispositions can prevent belief biases by fostering elaborative processing of belief-inconsistent information.