Reading science texts online: Does source information influence the identification of contradictions within texts?

• Students' identification of contradictions in an online science text was examined.
• Influence of source type (type of website and author) of the text was examined.
• Source type influenced students' quality expectations of online texts.
• Source type influenced students' identification of contradictions.

The present study investigated the influence of the source of information on high-school students' identification of contradictions within online science texts. A pilot study with N = 92 high-school students showed that their expectations regarding the quality of an online text differed significantly depending on the type of the source (i.e., on the authoritativeness of the website and the author's expertise). In the main study N = 161 high-school students read a science text that contained four text-internal contradictions and that varied regarding the authoritativeness of the website on which the text was presented (authoritative vs. non-authoritative website) and the author of the text (expert vs. layperson). After reading, a Conflict Verification Task (CVT) was applied to measure students' identification of the conflicting information. The results indicate that students' identification of contradictions differs as a function of website authoritativeness and author expertise. Both in a text stemming from an unambiguously authoritative source (“expert author/authoritative website”) and in a text stemming from an unambiguously non-authoritative source (“lay author/non-authoritative website”) students identified more contradictions than in a text stemming from a source whose authoritativeness is ambiguous (“lay author/authoritative website” or “expert author/non-authoritative website”).