First Come, First Remembered: Text Position Influences Attention Allocation and Recall of Digital Texts

When searching for information online, learners often encounter contradictions. In two experiments, we compared the effect of reading two texts containing conflicting theories on the same phenomenon. Either no explanation for the conflict (unresolved‐conflict group) or an explanation for the conflict in the second text was provided either before (resolved‐conflict beginning group) or after (resolved‐conflict end group) the second theory. Contrary to our pre‐registered hypotheses, Experiment 1 ( N = 198; eye‐tracking experiment) showed that participants allocated more attention to and recalled the first text better than the second. This text‐position effect disappeared only for recall when the conflict was resolved at the beginning of the second text. Experiment 2 ( N = 152; online) replicated the text‐position effect, but not the moderating effect of resolving the conflict at the beginning. Overall, the first text had a consistent advantage, largely independent of whether or when an explanation for the conflict was provided.