SPP 1409 - Subproject: The division of cognitive labour and the integration of information from multiple documents on the Internet (1st funding period)

Basic data for this project

Description

In this research project we seek to examine how laypersons deal with conflicting scientific information on the Internet. As a content domain we will focus on health related scientific information from medicine, and pharmacology. A wide-spread variant of Internet search will be simulated experimentally: Laypersons seek for scientific based information within multiple, partly conflicting text documents. They do so in order to support an informed health-related decision. In the case of controversially discussed scientific issues the question arises under which conditions laypersons do detect intertextual conflicts and how they assess the scientific soundness underlying the arguments presented in the texts. In the first two experiments we will examine the influence of factors on the side of the reader and the text itself. More precisely, in the first experiment we ask to what degree the identification of conflicting information depends on the presentation of conflicting information (within one text vs. between texts). We further ask to what degree the epistemological beliefs a reader holds impact on the detection of conflicts. In the second experiment the interplay of reading goals and hypertext-specific rhetorical connectors will be examined. To gain insight into laypersons’ conception of what constitutes high-quality scientific texts, we will conduct studies that focus on laypersons’ perspective on scientific expertise (division of cognitive labour). These studies will be conducted in parallel to the aforementioned studies on the comprehension of conflicting documents.The results of these studies will be used to finally examine the impact of the effect of empirically grounded markers of scientificality on the comprehension of multiple conflicting text documents. On a theoretical level the project aims at empirically testing assumptions derived from the theory of multiple documents comprehension (Perfetti, Rouet & Britt, 1999). We further seek to extend the construct of epistemological beliefs to integrate individuals’ assumptions about the division of cognitive labour within this construct.