Do you trust this speaker? The impact of prompting on middle-school students’ consideration of source when watching conflicting videos

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the impact of prompting on young students' source consideration when watching videos with conflicting information. 262 French 7th graders were confronted to a series of videos in which two speakers (varying in credibility) took opposite stances on the topic of organic farming. Students were either confronted with no prompts (control group), an indirect form of prompting (watching an instructional video on the benefits of sourcing before processing the material), a direct form of prompting (filling out source credibility rating scales during the processing of the material) or a combination of both. While the impact of the instructional video on students’ source consideration proved marginal, students who had to fill the source credibility rating scales during the processing of the material better remembered the identity of the speakers (notably in delayed posttest), were more inclined to consider the expert interviewee as the most convincing and to mention interviewees’ expertise to justify their judgement. The implications of these results are discussed.