Do you trust this speaker? The impact of prompting on middle-school students' consideration of source when watching conflicting videos

In this study, we investigated the impact of prompting on young students' source consideration when watching videos with conflicting information. 262 French 7th graders were shown a series of videos in which two speakers (varying in credibility) took opposite stances on the topic of organic farming. The students were either given no prompts (control group), an indirect form of prompting (watching an instructional video on the benefits of sourcing before processing the material), a direct form of prompting (filling out source credibility rating scales during the processing of the material) or a combination of direct and indirect prompting. While the impact of the instructional video on students' source consideration proved marginal, students who had to fill in the source credibility rating scales during the processing of the material remembered the identity of the speakers better (notably in delayed posttest), were more inclined to consider the expert interviewee as more convincing and to mention interviewees' expertise to justify their judgement. These results suggest that prompting seventh graders to evaluate the credibility of the sources during the processing of the material through the completion of credibility rating scales is an efficient method to improve their consideration of source information when watching videos.