Reading: Summary, Note & Table Completion: Question 6

In the 1970s, a group of researchers noticed something curious happening in a memory experiment: participants who had already read a false statement in an earlier session tended to judge that same statement as more believable the second time they encountered it, even though nothing about the statement's actual accuracy had changed. This phenomenon later became known as the illusory truth effect: the tendency for repeated exposure to a claim to increase how true that claim feels, independent of its actual truth value.

Subsequent studies confirmed that the effect does not depend on a person actually believing the statement the first time it was heard. Even statements later shown to be false, and even statements a listener had initially rejected outright, become more convincing on a second or third exposure. Psychologists explain this using a concept called processing fluency: repetition makes a sentence easier to retrieve and recognise, and the brain appears to mistake that ease of processing for a signal of accuracy, since true, familiar information is generally easier to process than unfamiliar, false information.

For decades, one assumption limited how worrying the effect seemed: researchers believed that a person's background knowledge would override it, so a claim contradicting something a person already knew with confidence would resist the fluency illusion. A widely cited 2015 study overturned this assumption. Participants were shown statements they had every reason to know were false, yet repeated exposure still nudged their truth ratings upward, even among participants who could correctly answer the true version of the same fact on a separate quiz. The researchers concluded that fluency can compete with, and sometimes override, stored knowledge rather than simply filling gaps where knowledge is absent.

The practical implications have drawn attention well beyond the laboratory. Fact-checking organisations have had to grapple with an uncomfortable corollary: merely restating a false claim in order to correct it, if done repeatedly, can itself strengthen the claim's familiarity and, paradoxically, its perceived truth. Some communication researchers now recommend that corrections lead with the accurate fact rather than repeating the myth, precisely to avoid reinforcing the fluency that makes false claims feel true.

Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Researchers first identified the illusory truth effect after noticing that participants rated a false statement as more (1) ____________________ the second time they read it. The effect persists even for statements a listener had initially (2) ____________________, and it does not require that the person believed the claim on first exposure. Psychologists attribute the effect to processing fluency: repetition makes a sentence easier to (3) ____________________ and recognise, which the brain misreads as a sign of accuracy. It was long assumed that a person's (4) ____________________ would protect them from the effect, but a 2015 study found that repeated exposure still raised truth ratings even among participants who could correctly answer a separate (5) ____________________ on the true version of the fact. Communication researchers now advise that corrections should (6) ____________________ with the accurate fact rather than repeating the myth, to avoid strengthening its familiarity.