Johan Van Strien

How attitude strength biases information processing and evaluation on the web

In this study we examined the influence of attitude strength on the processing and evaluation of sources and information on the Web. Seventy-nine German university students participated in an eye-tracking study in which they read information from eight pre-selected websites from different sources on the controversial topic of organic foods. Results showed that participants who felt strongly about the topic (i.e., those with strong prior attitude strength) scrutinized website logos of attitude-inconsistent websites shorter and judged the credibility of attitude-inconsistent websites lower. They also included more attitude-consistent information in an essay task than participants with weaker prior attitudes. Participants who felt less strongly about the topic (i.e., those with weaker prior attitudes) fixated longer on text from attitude-inconsistent websites than from attitude-consistent websites. By contrast, for participants with strong prior attitudes the time spent on the texts from attitude-consistent websites and attitude-inconsistent websites did not differ significantly. The results show that prior attitudes can bias evaluation and processing of information in different ways. Even though participants were not fully biased during initial information processing, they were so when evaluating the information and presenting it in an essay task. Students did not allocate more attention to attitude-inconsistent information.Students with high attitude strength find attitude-consistent websites more credible.Students were mostly biased when evaluating information and presenting in an essay.

The role of positional knowledge and tonal approaches in cellists’ sight-reading:

Sight-reading is an important skill for amateur and professional musicians. Several factors seem to play a role in sight-reading skills, such as expertise level, ear training, mental speed and improvisation skills. If we are right in supposing that these factors cannot easily be generalized for all musicians, one of the reasons for this must surely lie in the fact that different musical instruments set different technical requirements for the player. The purpose of this study was to investigate which factors help cello students have better sight-reading abilities. Amateur cello students (N = 79) were tested for position knowledge, use of tonal and positional approaches and actual sight-reading ability, and their sight-reading performance was measured by counting pitch and fluency errors they made in short pieces of varying complexity. This study used a partly correlational (use of tonal/positional approaches, technical level, experience, and position knowledge) and a partly experimental repeated-measures design (key complexity). The findings suggest that position knowledge shows a very strong negative correlation with the number of sight-reading errors and a weak correlation with pauses. Use of positional approaches shows no significantly stronger correlation with the number of sight-reading errors than the use of tonal approaches. In addition, it appears that an increase in the key complexity leads to more sight-reading errors and more pauses. Finally, the position knowledge and technical level of participants explain 83% of the variation in the total pitch errors. Experience and use of tonal approaches explain 40% of the variation in the number of short pauses.