Christian Unkelbach | PubMed Health

PubMed2007

Reversing the truth effect: learning the interpretation of processing fluency in judgments of truth.

Repeated statements receive higher truth ratings than new statements. Given that repetition leads to greater experienced processing fluency, the author proposes that fluency is used in truth judgments according to its ecological validity. Thus, the truth effect occurs because people learn that fluency and truth tend to be positively correlated. Three experiments tested this notion. Experiment 1 replicated the truth effect by directly manipulating processing fluency; Experiment 2 reversed the effect by manipulating the correlation between fluency and truth in a learning phase. Experiment 3 generalized this reversal by showing a transfer of a negative correlation between perceptual fluency (due to color contrast) and truth to truth judgments when fluency is due to prior exposure (i.e., repetition).

Cues↗

PubMed2006

The learned interpretation of cognitive fluency.

The fluency of cognitive processes influences many judgments: Fluently processed statements are judged to be true, fluently processed instances are judged to be frequent, and fluently processed names are judged to be famous. According to a cue-learning approach, these effects of experienced fluency arise because the fluency cue is interpreted differentially in accordance with its learned validity. Two experiments tested this account by manipulating the fluency cue's validity. Fluency was manipulated by color contrast (Experiment 1) and by required mental rotation (Experiment 2). If low fluency was correlated with a required affirmative or "old" response (and high fluency with a negative or "new" response) in a training phase, participants showed a reversal of the classic pattern in the recognition phase: Low-fluency stimuli had a higher probability than high-fluency stimuli to be classified as old. Thus, the interpretation and therefore the impact of fluency depended on the cue's learned validity.

Adaptation, Psychological↗