Beliefs and Discourse Processing

In this chapter, we address several questions. How do the prior beliefs of students influence the way in which they process this information? Will students comprehend information with more or less success if it matches or does not match their prior beliefs? Under what circumstances might students change their beliefs? Do students change beliefs to make them consistent with data reported in scientific studies, or are other factors at play? We also argue that the traditional methods and theories from text comprehension are well suited to examine the influences of beliefs on the processing students do and the mental representations they form when reading belief-related texts. [This chapter was published in M. F. Schober, D. N. Rapp, & M. A. Britt (Eds). "Handbook of Discourse Processes, 2nd Edition." (pp. 295-314). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.]