Epistemic Vigilance Research Articles

Higher instead of lower accessibility of fiction texts increases epistemic vigilance during reading.

Higher instead of lower accessibility of fiction texts increases epistemic vigilance during reading.

Fallacy as Foundation of Post-Truth Knowledge and Knowing in LIS

How can library and information science (LIS) better promote epistemic vigilance and critical ethics toward post-truth (i.e., harmful; false; mis/dis/mal) information? This preliminary critical philosophical investigation argues LIS must go beyond considering mis/dis/mal information, and instead examine how post-truth shapes the process of producing mis/dis/mal epistemology through fallacies. Drawing from insights related to epistemicide and epistemic injustice in LIS, we reconsider post-truth and the modes of justification validating false beliefs as knowledge. We operationalize Fallacy 1 (“deceptively bad arguments”) and Fallacy 2 (“false popular belief”) to consider post-truth knowledge production. LIS faces an immediate pedagogical imperative of preparing information professionals to equitably mitigate fallacious harms inflicted by fake news proliferation, wavering information literacy, and the largely uncritical popularization of AI systems and tools which forcefully facilitate knower interactions with post-truth information. The evolving notions of post-truth information requires a critical ethical revolution for LIS.

Developing and evaluating the extended epistemic vigilance framework

AbstractIn science education, epistemic vigilance plays a key role in the development of students' critical thinking by supporting students' abilities to evaluate the expertise level of the source and to evaluate the claim itself, using rigorous scientific standards and appropriate argumentation heuristics. Based on previous studies, which suggested two aspects of epistemic vigilance—reflecting the source of information and the claim that is made—we developed the Extended Epistemic Vigilance Framework (EEVF) that includes an additional aspect of evaluating the receiver. In an empirical exploratory pilot study, we evaluated the reliability and validity of an EEVF‐based category system and investigated to what extent the EEVF can be used to characterize changes in biology graduate students' epistemic vigilance after participating in a critical thinking course. Results show that the EEVF‐based category system includes reliable and valid categories for identifying students' epistemic vigilance. A statistically significant increase with a small effect size was found in students' epistemic vigilance regarding the reliability of the source and the references used to support the claim following their participation in the critical thinking course. However, a statistically significant decrease with a small effect size was found regarding the awareness of the aspects of the one‐sidedness of the claim, the context of the claim, and cognitive biases and socioemotional influences on the receiver. In general, these findings indicate that the EEVF offers an improved framework to analyze students' epistemic vigilance more comprehensively.

Aggression and disagreement in public communication

Abstract The persuasive effectiveness of implicit strategies, associated with reduced epistemic vigilance, may lead to their exploitation in conveying doubtful information in advertisement and propaganda. In political communication, presuppositions tend to specialize for the conveyance of questionable opinions and self-praise, while implicatures reveal a preferential association with face-threatening contents in general, where implicitness can allow speakers to count less evidently as offenders, at the same time being able to convey contents that can discredit the opponent. In public debates, speakers do not necessarily aim at convincing the opponent, but at shaping the beliefs of the public at home. In Italian broadcast political debates, implicatures and presuppositions are used exactly with this function. Confirming this pattern, participants in public debates often “intercept” the opponent’s implicatures and make them explicit in order to reduce the persuasiveness effected by their being implicit. Sometimes this also offers the opportunity to provide explicitations that are different from the original implicature, caricaturizing the position of the opponent with a strawman effect.

The Development of Epistemic Vigilance and Epistemic Trust Across the Lifespan: Perspectives from Empirical Research on Self-Regulatory Social Learning.

The Development of Epistemic Vigilance and Epistemic Trust Across the Lifespan: Perspectives from Empirical Research on Self-Regulatory Social Learning This article examines what we know about the development of epistemic vigilance and epistemic trust between early infancy and adolescence.With this brief review, we intend to help put into perspective the hypotheses advanced by Fonagy and his colleagues within the socio-epistemic theory of psychopathology, according to which psychopathology reflects a closure to interpersonal communication resulting from unfavorable learning experiences in early development. Here, we will discuss how children become sensitive to overt interpersonal communication, and what cognitive skills underpin such sensitivity. Next, we shall discuss the empirical evidence that children in the second year of life already possess a rudimentary capacity for epistemic vigilance: they seem to evaluate the competence of different adult informants and appear to seek information and learn from adults based on such evaluations. Third, we will outline studies showing that in the third year of life children appear to increasingly trust ostensive communication, up to the point of becoming (at least apparently) less sensitive to the possibility of being misinformed or deceived. Finally, we will discuss how, between late childhood and adolescence, children first learn to distinguish lies, then irony, and increasingly engage in complex communication ecologies. Our review simultaneously supports the basic principles of the socio-epistemic theory of psychopathology and suggests that the theory needs further refinement of its ontogenetic predictions.

Social‐oriented versus task‐oriented streamer interaction styles on live streaming e‐commerce: Empirical research in China

AbstractLive streaming commerce has seen significant growth in recent years. While the interaction style of streamers with consumers is crucial in influencing engagement behaviour, there is limited understanding of how a streamer's interaction style affects consumer engagement. This study, based on epistemic vigilance mechanisms, explores the effect of streamers' interaction styles (social‐oriented versus task‐oriented) on consumer engagement. It also investigates the mediating role of epistemic vigilance and the moderating role of consumer expertise. The study's findings, derived from three experiments, are as follows. First, social‐oriented interaction styles, compared with task‐oriented styles, are more likely to boost consumer engagement. Second, task‐oriented interaction styles lead to increased consumer epistemic vigilance, which subsequently decreases their engagement. Third, social‐oriented interaction styles enhance engagement intentions among consumers with high expertise compared to those with low expertise. These insights will provide live streaming commerce managers with a better understanding of consumers' psychological activities, enabling them to effectively design streamers' interaction strategies for marketing activities.

Vagueness as an implicit-encoding persuasive strategy: an experimental approach.

The paper provides novel theoretical and experimental perspectives on the functioning of linguistic vagueness as an implicit persuasive strategy. It presents an operative definition of pragmatically marked vagueness, referring to vague expressions whose interpretation is not retrievable by recipients. The phenomenon is illustrated via numerous examples of its use in predominantly persuasive texts (i.e., advertising and political propaganda) in different languages. The psycholinguistic functioning of vague expressions is then illustrated by the results of a self-paced reading task experiment. Data showing shorter reading times associated with markedly vague expressions as compared to expressions that are either (a) lexically more precise or (b) made precise by the context suggest that the former are interpreted in a shallow way, without searching for and/or retrieving exact referents. These results support the validity of a differentiation between context-supported vs. non-supported vague expressions. Furthermore, validation of using marked vagueness as a persuasive implicit strategy which reduces epistemic vigilance is provided.

Linguistic Means of Speech Manipulation in the Discourse of Modern German-Language Media

This article touches upon the problem of identifying and analysing speech manipulation in the texts of the German-speaking media. The media determines linguistic and cultural pictures of the world, so the analysis of media language will help to establish trends of influence on the cognitive consciousness of society. In today’s geopolitical environment, the basic functions of the media transform, as it uses specific techniques of speech manipulation to achieve informational and emotive effectiveness, allowing for the distortion of the cognitive perception of information by the audience. The material for this study was German-language media texts, selected by means of a total sampling and semantic-syntactic analysis. The relevance of the study lies in its linguistic and extralinguistic factors. The author states that in the conditions of information pollution all the participants of communication should be able to identify speech manipulation in a text, qualify information in terms of its significance or reliability, and to the risks of exposure to manipulative actions. Taking the peculiarities of speech manipulation methods used in the modern German-language media texts into account, the recipient must have sufficient interpretational competence to allow him or her to overcome the barriers that prevent the identification and mental comprehension of the means of speech manipulation in the texts of foreign-language publications. The main purpose of this study is to remove some difficulties in the perception of information in German-language media text by presenting signs of indirect pressure and speech manipulation in them. To this end, the article classifies the basic techniques of speech manipulation in terms of linguistic analysis, and also justifies the expediency of forming interpretative competence in the sphere of epistemic vigilance. We argue that this competence is effective when it comes to levelling the negative impact of the discourse of German-language media on the cognitive consciousness of the audience.

What makes inferences reliable? The unpredictable relationship between pragmatic inference and truth

One of the main tenets of Gricean pragmatics is the distinction between what is said and what is implicated; that is, between truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional meaning. The main contribution of post-Gricean pragmatics was a new definition of what is said as a pragmatic and truth-conditional meaning (Carston, 2002; Recanati, 2010; Moeschler, 2018a). However, implicated meaning (mainly conversational implicature) is still defined as non-truth-conditional because it is cancellable without contradiction. The main consequence is that a speaker can deny having intended her implicature, which results in the hearer having no guarantee of the truthfulness of his inference. This paper explores the relationship between truth and pragmatic implicated meaning and posits that the assessment of a truth value of an inference is a crucial step in the comprehension process. To demonstrate this hypothesis, the paper develops a relevance-based approach to inference, which is coupled with Kahneman's dual cognitive system. I argue that the triggering of an inference is an intuitive and automatic process controlled by System 1, whereas its assessment as a true or false assumption is controlled by System 2. In other words, System 2 is responsible for what is defined in relevance theory as epistemic vigilance.

Trust but verify? A social epistemology framework of knowledge acquisition and verification practices for fictional entertainment

Abstract Fictional entertainment can serve as a vivid and easily comprehensible source of knowledge, but only if audiences are able to tell its kernel of truth apart from fantasy. In this article, we use the lens of social epistemology to develop a theoretical framework of knowledge acquisition and verification practices for fictional entertainment that integrates various extant lines of work on entertainment education, perceived realism, information processing, credibility assessment, and verification strategies. To flesh out the conceptual model derived from top-down theoretical integration, we use an inductive, bottom-up approach to theory building, assisted by qualitative research. The resulting model describes knowledge acquisition from fiction as an essentially social process characterized by a combination of epistemic trust and epistemic vigilance toward fictional content and sources, in which credibility is assessed via social knowledge sharing and verification practices.

Childhood adversity and adolescent acting-out behaviors: the mediating role of mentalizing difficulties and epistemic vigilance.

Childhood adversity is a well-established risk factor for adolescent acting-out behaviors such as self-harm, bingeing, substance abuse, and aggressive behavior. From a mentalizing perspective, acting-out behaviors are understood as resulting from a combination of impairments in mentalizing and epistemic vigilance that are a consequence of childhood adversity. Yet, few studies have investigated these assumptions. The current study investigated the potential mediating role of mentalizing impairments and epistemic vigilance in the relationship between childhood adversity and acting-out behaviors in adolescents, oversampled for risk status for psychopathology (N = 451, mean age = 15.40years). Structural equation modeling showed a strong, direct relationship between childhood adversity and acting-out behaviors, confirming the importance of traumatic childhood experiences for adolescent acting-out behaviors. This relationship was partially mediated by both mentalizing difficulties and epistemic vigilance, explaining about 40% of the total variance. These results support the importance of focusing on strengthening mentalizing abilities and lowering epistemic hypervigilance in psychotherapeutic work with adolescents who have experienced childhood trauma.

The Role of Epistemic Trust in Mentalization-Based Treatment of Borderline Psychopathology

Building on the notion of epistemic trust as facilitating social learning, in this article we clarify how interventions from mentalization-based treatment (MBT) for borderline personality disorder generate this process. We suggest first that being mentalized is a critical cue in interactions to establish epistemic trust and second that epistemic mistrust may represent a final common pathway through which aversive relational experiences in the past may exert their influence on treatments—both as a disposition of the patient and as a characteristic of the therapist-patient encounter. By charting MBT interventions from the initial assessment and formulation, through individual and group therapy sessions, to re-engaging with the wider social environment, we examine how each of these can establish a “we-mode,” an interpersonal experience associated with being mentalized that unlocks the barrier posed by epistemic vigilance. In addition, implications for relational mentalizing and rupture and repair within the therapeutic relationship are discussed.

Epistemic vigilance and persuasion: The construction of trust in online marketing

This article explores trust in the discourse of online advertising. Drawing on the relevance-theoretic concept of epistemic vigilance, it asks whether the mechanisms that underlie such a notion can explain which elements in an advert are likely to contribute to the perception of the message as more reliable or credible, thus overcoming readers' inherent skepticism towards advertising. To this end, the online market for tea was taken as a case in point, and an ad hoc corpus of 216 texts from British websites was compiled and analyzed. Findings show that the writers of these texts seek to present their readership with a variety of fine-tuned cultural representations, which may or may not be supported by factual information. This serves to allow the message to pass through the audience's filters of epistemic vigilance, fostering a sense of reliability in the sources of the communication and, by turn, in the product itself.

Facts are hard to come by: discerning and sharing factual information on social media

Abstract How credulous are we when engaging information on social media? Addressing this question, this article aims to understand how individuals’ epistemic vigilance, a set of cognitive mechanisms that comprise our system of precaution in social interactions, may operate and fall short. Reporting findings from two survey experiments (Study 1, N = 413; Study 2, N = 392), we show that participants tended to be skeptical toward social media news, were reasonably successful in identifying true news, and reported a tendency to share true rather than false news. In one study, social endorsement enticed a higher accuracy rating of news posts. In both studies, people judged attitudinally congruent news posts as being more accurate and reported a higher likelihood to share them. Individuals’ propensity to reflective thinking measured by cognitive reflection test potentially operated as a restraint on sharing inaccurate information and bolstered veracity anchoring in their information engagement.

Advancing critical discourse analysis of Indigenous consultations: Argument Continuity v. epistemic vigilance

ABSTRACT The paper conducts the critical discourse analysis of Indigenous consultation reports with the help of Argument Continuity, a brand-new critical discourse analysis category. Argument Continuity is a set of the same arguments and counterarguments repeatedly produced/reproduced by the institutionally dominant arguer through an adversarial reasoning process to dismiss opposing arguments without reflecting upon their merits. Argument Continuity is contingent upon motivated criticism, a reasoning practice of biased evaluation of opposing arguments. Epistemic vigilance is a polar reasoning practice of unbiased evaluation of opposing arguments that never results in responding to them with Argument Continuity. The paper applies an institutionalist perspective to tracing and explaining the reasoning dynamics of motivated criticism and epistemic vigilance in the distorted (controlled) context of reasoning interactivity between arguers with power asymmetries. Contrasting the Indigenous consultations over the Trans Mountain and Mackenzie Valley pipelines, the paper reveals how the institutional context constraining/advancing the reasoning capacity of Indigenous arguers to resist the controversial project made it easier/harder for the institutionally dominant officials to employ motivated criticism/epistemic vigilance, responding to Indigenous concerns with or without Argument Continuities.

When children acquire irony: The role of epistemic vigilance

AbstractIrony is a mechanism that, at the same time, says and does not say. It is a case in which the speaker literally expresses a sense that is not what the speaker wants to communicate. It is a case of implicit echoic mention that conveys an attitude toward what is mentioned. Therefore, an utterance that, to be understood, needs contextual elements, meta-communicative elements and a mutual attribution of knowledge, intentions and affective states between speaker and hearer; the elaboration of which requires specific capacities – linguistics as well as cognitive – that allow to recognize the unsaid intentions of the speaker. Even if the ironic speaker expresses an attitude and, in doing this, s/he is ‘honest’ (s/he wants the hearer to recognize the falsehood or the irrelevance of the expressed proposition and to grasp the attitude towards it), most of the time, ironic expressions are sentences that are apparently false. To be able to distinguish between irony and lying, the hearer must determine that the ironic speaker wants the listener to disbelieve the statement, whereas the liar wants the listener to believe just what is said. Distinguishing between a false observation said with a misleading intent and an untrue sentence proffered/uttered with an ironic intent, requires a right attribution of a second-order belief, but it also requires the capacity ofepistemic vigilance, an ability that allows us to evaluate the accuracy of the content of the information provided by others, and to discriminate the reliability of the source of information. The complex abilities, required by irony elaboration, make irony learning during childhood particularly difficult. Acquisition of irony comprehension is more complex than any other form of non-literal speech and, during growth, it reaches its complete development later than many other complex linguistic aspects, only about at the age of ten-twelve. The article wants to show how difficulties of irony elaboration in children are linked not only to the full development of meta-representational abilities, but in addition and especially to the development of epistemic vigilance.

Misinformation rules!? Could “group rules” reduce misinformation in online personal messaging?

Personal messaging platforms are hugely popular and often implicated in the spread of misinformation. We explore an unexamined practice on them: when users create “group rules” to prevent misinformation entering everyday interactions. Our data are a subset of in-depth interviews with 33 participants in a larger program of longitudinal qualitative fieldwork ( N = 102) we conducted over 16 months. Participants could also donate examples of misinformation via our customized smartphone application. We find that some participants created group rules to mitigate what they saw as messaging’s harmful affordances. In the context of personalized trust relationships, these affordances were perceived as making it likely that misinformation would harm social ties. Rules reduce the vulnerability and can stimulate metacommunication that, over time, fosters norms of collective reflection and epistemic vigilance, although the impact differs subtly according to group size and membership. Subject to further exploration, group rulemaking could reduce the spread of online misinformation.

Eye tracking sentences in language education

The present study reports and discusses the use of eye tracking qualitative data (static and dynamic gaze plots and heatmaps) in reading workshops in a middle school and in Generative Syntax and Sentence Processing courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Both endeavors take the sentential level as the proper object to be metacognitively explored in language education in order to develop innate science forming capacity and knowledge of language. In both projects non-discrepant qualitative eye tracking data collected and quantitatively analyzed in psycholinguistic studies carried out in LAPEX-UFRJ (Experimental Psycholinguistics Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) were displayed to students as a point of departure, triggering discussions. Active, problem-solving based methodologies were employed with the objective of stimulating student participation. The article also discusses the importance of developing full literacy, epistemic vigilance and intellectual self-defense in an infodemic world.

Intonational production as a window into children's early pragmatic competence: The case of the Norwegian polarity focus and two jo particles.

The use of the Norwegian intonation pattern Polarity Focus highlights the polarity of a contextually given thought and enables the speaker to signal whether she believes it to be a true or false description of some state of affairs. In this study, we investigate whether preschool children can produce this intonation pattern and what their productions reveal about the development of their early pragmatic abilities. We also explore their use of Polarity Focus in combination with two particles encoded by the linguistic form jo: a sentence-initial response particle, and a sentence-internal pragmatic particle. We used a semi-structured elicitation task consisting of four test conditions of increasing complexity to shed light on the developmental trajectory of the mastery of Polarity Focus. Our results show that already from the age of 2 children are proficient users of this intonation pattern, which occurs in three out of four conditions for this age group. As expected, only 4- and 5-year-olds produced Polarity Focus in the most complex test condition that required the attribution of a false belief. We further found production of sentence-initial response particle jo by all age groups, both in combination with Polarity Focus and alone. Production of the sentence-internal pragmatic particle jo, felicitously co-occurring with Polarity Focus, emerges around age 3. This study presents the first experimental evidence of Norwegian children's mastery of intonation as a communicative device in language production and their use of the two jo particles. We show how intonational production can be used as a window into children's early pragmatic competence: The mastery of the production of Polarity Focus can be seen as an early linguistic manifestation of the cognitive abilities for the attribution of thoughts and epistemic vigilance towards propositional content.

Ironic speakers, vigilant hearers

AbstractVerbal irony characteristically involves the expression of a derogatory, dissociative attitude. The ironical speaker is not only stating a blatant falsehood or irrelevant proposition; she is also communicating her stance towards its epistemic status. The centrality of attitude recognition in irony understanding opens up the question of which cognitive abilities make it possible. Drawing on Wilson (2009), we provide a full-fledged account of the role of epistemic vigilance in irony understanding and suggest that it relies on the exercise of first- and second-order vigilance towards the content, the ironic speaker as well as the source of the irony.