Refutation-style texts have been considered a viable strategy for changing psychological misconceptions. The current study aims to integrate refutation-style texts into a classroom-based method of learning. Psychology students were administered a true/false misconception survey and then viewed several refutation-style poster presentations containing information describing a misconception as false. Posters were created with the intent to revise psychological misconceptions. After the poster presentations, participants took the same true/false posttest survey and then were asked to explain their answer choice. Participants took the posttest survey several days later to assess long-term retention. Results revealed that the refutation-style poster presentations were successful in revising knowledge for psychology misconceptions. The benefits of integrating refutation-based learning into classroom and laboratory studies are discussed.
American Psychological Association. (2010). Psychology as a core Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) discipline: Report of the American Psychological Association 2009 Presidential Task Force on the Future of Psychology as a STEM discipline. Retrieved fromhttp://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/stem-discipline.aspx
BroughtonS. H.SinatraG. M.ReynoldsR. E. (2010). The nature of the refutation text effect: An investigation of attention allocation. The Journal of Educational Research, 103, 407–423.
4.
CareyS. (2009). The origin of concepts. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
5.
ChiM. T. H. (2008). Three types of conceptual change: Belief revision, mental model transformation, and categorical shift. In VosniadouS. (Ed.), International handbook of research on conceptual change (pp. 61–82). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
6.
CookA. E.HalleranJ. G.O’BrienE. J. (1998). What is readily available during reading? A memory-based view of text processing. Discourse Processes, 26, 109–129.
7.
EaglyA. H.ChaikenF. (1993). The psychology of attitudes. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College.
8.
GardnerR. M.BrownD. L. (2013). A test of contemporary misconceptions in psychology. Learning and Individual Differences, 24, 211–215.
9.
GuzzettiB. J.SnyderT. E.GlassG. V.GamasW. S. (1993). Promoting conceptual change in science: A comparative meta-analysis of instructional interventions from reading education and science education. Reading Research Quarterly, 28, 117–159.
10.
HughesS.LyddyF.KaplanR.NicholsA. L.MillerH.SaadC. G.LynchA. J. (2015). Highly prevalent but not always persistent: Undergraduate and graduate student’s misconceptions about psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 42, 34–42.
11.
HughesS.LyddyF.LambeS. (2013). Misconceptions about psychological science: A review. Psychology Learning & Teaching, 12, 20–31. doi:10.2304/plat.2013.12.1.20
12.
KendeouP.O’BrienE. J. (2014). The knowledge revision components (KReC) framework: Processes and mechanisms. In RappD. N.BraaschJ. L. G. (Eds.), Processing inaccurate information: Theoretical and applied perspectives from cognitive science and the educational sciences (pp. 353–377). Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press.
13.
KendeouP.SmithE. R.O’BrienE. J. (2013). Updating during reading comprehension: Why causality matters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39, 854–865.
14.
KendeouP.van den BroekP. (2005). The effects of readers’ misconceptions on comprehension of scientific text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 235–245.
15.
KendeouP.van den BroekP. (2007). The effects of prior knowledge and text structure on comprehension processes during reading of scientific texts. Memory & Cognition, 35, 1567–1577.
16.
KendeouP.WalshE. K.SmithE. R.O’BrienE. J. (2014). Knowledge revision processes in refutation texts. Discourse Processes, 51, 374–397.
17.
KowalskiP.TaylorA. K. (2009). The effect of refuting misconceptions in the introductory psychology class. Teaching of Psychology, 36, 153–159.
18.
KowalskiP.TaylorA. K. (2011). Effectiveness of refutational teaching for high-and low-achieving students, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 11, 79–90.
19.
KrautA. G. (2012). Psychological science is important. Talk delivered at the 24th Annual Convention for the Association for Psychological Science, Chicago, IL.
20.
LaCailleR. A. (2015). Two birds with one myth-debunking campaign: Engaging students to target psychological misconceptions. Teaching of Psychology, 42, 323–329.
21.
LassondeK. A. (2012, 3). Misconceptions of psychology knowledge towards a process of revision. Invited talk. Presented at the 7th Annual Midwestern Conference on Professional Psychology, Owatonna, MN.
22.
LassondeK. A.KendeouP.O’BrienE. J. (2016). Refutation texts: Overcoming psychology misconceptions that are resistance to change. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 2, 62–74.
LilienfeldS. O.LynnS. J.RuscioJ.BeyersteinB. L. (2010). 50 great myths of popular psychology: Shattering widespread misconceptions about human behavior. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
25.
MyersD. G. (2011). Psychology (8th ed.). New York, NY: Worth.
26.
NyhanaB.ReiflerJ. (2010). When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior, 32, 303–330.
27.
NyhanaB.ReiflerJ. (2015). Does correcting myths about the flu vaccine work? An experimental evaluation of the effects of corrective information. Vaccine, 33, 459–464.
28.
O’BrienE. J.RizzellaM. L.AlbrechtJ. E.HalleranJ. G. (1998). Updating a situation model: A memory-based text processing view. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 1200–1210.
29.
OhlssonS. (2009). Resubsumption: A possible mechanism for conceptual change and belief revision. Educational Psychologist, 44, 20–40.
30.
SinatraG. M.BroughtonS. H. (2011). Bridging reading comprehension and conceptual change in science education: The promise of refutation text. Reading Research Quarterly, 46, 374–393.
31.
StanovichK. E. (2013). How to think straight about psychology (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
32.
TanK.GohN.ChiaL.TreagustD. F. (2001). Secondary students’ perceptions about learning qualitative analysis in inorganic chemistry. Research in Science & Technological Education, 19, 223–234.
33.
TaylorA.KowalskiP. (2004). Naïve psychological science. The prevalence, strength and sources of misconceptions. Psychological Record, 54, 15–25.
34.
TaylorA. K.KowalskiP. (2012). Students’ misconceptions in psychology: How you ask matters…sometimes. Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 12, 62–77.
35.
TippettC. D. (2010). Refutational text in science education: A review of two decades of research. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 8, 951–970.
36.
UzuntiryakiE.GebanO. (2005). Effect of conceptual change approach accompanied with concept mapping on understanding of solution concepts. Instructional Science, 33, 311–339.
37.
VosniadouS.VamvakoussiX.SkopelitiI. (2008). The framework theory approach to the problem of conceptual change. In VosniadouS. (Ed.), International handbook of research on conceptual change (pp. 3–34). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
