Situation-model representations of conflicting textual information in L2 readers: the effects of prior beliefs and L2 proficiency

Abstract In a knowledge society characterized by an abundance of information sources that present conflicting perspectives on socio-scientific controversies, it is extremely important for readers to construct effective mental models of such controversies. Nevertheless, readers’ mental representations of controversial information are assumed to be biased towards their pre-existing beliefs (text-belief consistency effect). This study extends earlier research on the effect to L2 reading contexts and examines whether L2 readers’ prior beliefs affect their situation-model representations of documents that present opposing standpoints on an established controversy in language education: inductive vs. deductive approaches. Additionally, we examined whether the readers’ strength of situation-model representations is affected by their proficiency level and whether proficiency moderates the effect. Fifty-eight readers read texts that presented conflicting perspectives on the controversy. A recognition task was used to assess the strength of their situation-model representations. The results revealed that readers’ mental representations of the documents were biased towards the perspectives that aligned with their pre-existing beliefs on the controversy. The results further revealed a strong significant effect for L2 proficiency on the strength of the situation-model representations of the texts. However, proficiency failed to moderate the text-belief consistency effect that readers displayed when reading the controversial textual information.