Information Overload? The Relations between source monitoring, evaluation, and executive function processes in children

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Never before has there been so much information at our fingertips. A quick internet search often provides 2-3 relevant websites, we integrate the information we read, and put this new knowledge towards some purpose. It is not surprising, however, that some websites are not reliable sources of information. The same can be said for books, newspapers, co-workers, and so on. It is necessary to ensure that we do not contaminate our minds with information from untrustworthy sources. Yet, we often forget or confuse the sources of information and this threatens the reliability of our knowledge. From around age 3, children gradually learn how to pay attention to knowledge sources and how to determine the source of information. Our research focuses on the development of several thought processes known to be influenced by the development of the frontal lobe (the reasoning part of the brain) and critical to ‘source monitoring’. We expose children aged 3- to 14-years old to different sources of information and see how their memory, reasoning skills, judgment of source credibility, and ability to control their thoughts and attention affects the way they monitor the sources of information. It is important that children, and adults, are able to reflect on where they learned information so that we can ‘edit out’ unreliable information from our knowledge base. As well as improving our understanding of the development of source monitoring, the research can also be used to answer basic research questions in many other areas, especially in an aging population. For example, Why does aging lead to deficits in source monitoring? Why do seniors often provide the same information to the same source? The current bombardment of sources of information is not likely to disappear soon. Thus, we must learn how to be intelligent and active consumers of information to protect the reliability of our knowledge.