We investigated whether memory for scientific arguments and their sources were affected by the appropriateness of the claim-evidence relationship. Undergraduates read health articles in one of four conditions derived by crossing claim type (causal with definite qualifier, associative with tentative qualifier) and evidence type (experimental,…

Well-educated laypeople tend to rely on their own ability to evaluate scientific claims when they obtain information from texts with high comprehensibility. The present study investigated whether controversial content reduces this facilitating effect of high text comprehensibility on readers' self-reliance and whether the influence of…

Three experiments were conducted to examine how precisely readers recall the claims of arguments that they have just read. Participants read simple, 2-clause arguments such as, "The U.S. is right to intervene in other countries' affairs because local events can catastrophically impact the entire world." Participants then evaluated each argument…