Belief-biased representations of textual information in bilinguals: Language as a source characteristic

Abstract When pursuing a controversial socio-scientific issue, readers are expected to construct balanced representations that include overlapping and opposing information. However, readers’ mental often biased towards their prior beliefs. Previous research on such text-belief consistency effects have been conducted mostly in monolingual contexts. The present study investigated whether document language, as source characteristic, moderates at the situation-model text-base representation levels. Eighty-seven bilingual readers—selected from larger initial sample—read two documents global spread of English. were either presented participants’ first (Persian) second (English) languages, or one was Persian other A recognition task used assess strength strength. Overall, participants built stronger situation models for belief-consistent information opposed belief-inconsistent language moderated effect. both texts English, effect smaller than when Persian. For combination English texts, enlarged text but disappeared consistent These results suggest can serve strong credibility cue eliminate belief effects, least issue inherently related.