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Updated: Sep 12, 2025
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An Experimental Analysis of Children's Ability to Provide a False Report about a Crime
Published on: May 3, 2016
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Children's detection of online misinformation
Andrew Shtulman1, Lucy Stoll1, Lesly Sabroso1
1Department of Psychology, Occidental College, 1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles, CA 91104, United States of America.
Cognition
|August 7, 2025
Summary
Children
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Media Literacy
- Child Development
Background:
- Children increasingly access online information.
- Detecting online misinformation is a crucial skill.
- Adults' ability to detect misinformation improves with cognitive reflection and instruction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if children's ability to detect online misinformation is influenced by cognitive reflection and instructional interventions.
- To compare children's misinformation detection with their performance on a developmental Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT-D).
Main Methods:
- Children aged 4-12 judged the veracity of real and fake online news stories.
- Performance was compared to scores on the CRT-D.
- A tutorial on scrutinizing content or source credibility was administered.
Main Results:
- Children's fake news detection strongly correlated with CRT-D scores.
- Instruction did not improve children's detection accuracy; it increased skepticism towards all news.
- Adults showed improved detection with source-based instruction.
Conclusions:
- Cognitive reflection aids online news evaluation from an early age.
- Instructional methods need refinement for children's misinformation detection.
- Understanding news sources is key to developing adult-level detection skills.
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