Good At Spotting Fake News? You Might Have A Superior Memory

In this “post-fact world” we live in, with fake news permeating social media feeds, the ability to sniff out what’s responsible journalism and what’s garbage is its own reward. But according to a small new study, a knack for spotting Macedonian teen fiction masquerading as political news might also be a sign you’ve got a good memory. Research published by the Association for Psychological Science found that an ability to detect misinformation was associated with an improved ability to recall information later on. In an experiment, people who noticed factual inaccuracies about an event they witnessed were more likely to remember the exact details of the event compared with people who never saw the misinformation in the first place. How it worked The study was broken up into two similar experiments. For the first, researchers showed 72 undergraduate volunteers six slideshows. Each slideshow contained 50 photos that detailed a particular event, like a thief discovering $1 bills in a car. After studying the presentations, the participants then completed an unrelated five-minute task designed to distract them.  After the distraction, they were given descriptions to read with each of the slides they saw in the presentation. They were either shown captions consistent with what actually happened in the photo (”He examined the bills and saw they were all $1 bills”), neutral captions (”He examined the bi...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news