The role of prior knowledge and intelligence in resolving conceptual interference in statement-verification tasks

Statement-verification tasks investigate the conflict of intuitive and scientific conceptions. Taking the difference of congruent and incongruent statements for accuracy or reaction time in such tasks reveals how strongly intuitive concepts interfere with scientific ones. Recent studies observed limited stable individual differences in interference strength across various scientific domains. This suggests that stable cognitive abilities, such as general inhibition, might not be the primary drivers of interference strength in these tasks. In this study we thus examined how stable cognitive resources (intelligence) and variable cognitive resources (prior knowledge) jointly shape interference strength in statement-verification tasks. This longitudinal, quasi-experimental field study involved 118 secondary school students receiving instruction about fields and tests with statement-verification tasks. We explored how prior knowledge of fields and magnetism and intelligence relate to accuracy, speed, and diffusion model parameters on statement-verification tasks. We enriched the methodology by applying Wiener Diffusion Models. Our results supported our pre-registered hypotheses on the effect of congruency and prior knowledge. In addition, we replicated findings by earlier studies regarding the weak psychometric properties of interference strength in statement-verification tasks. We discuss methodological suggestions for future work, modeling accuracy and reaction times simultaneously.