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Article History

Received: 14 February 2025

Accepted: 23 June 2025

First Online: 6 July 2025

Declarations

:

: This experiment was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (Protocol # IRB-FY23-308). All participants gave informed consent.

: All listed authors concur with the submission of the manuscript; the final version has been approved by all authors.

: Information shared on social media can reach up to millions of users almost instantaneously. An unintended consequence of this rapid communication is an unprecedented spread of misinformation. Exposure to misinformation online has serious real-world consequences. For example, believing false information about viruses and politicians may influence health guideline compliance and voter behavior. Social media platforms have tried to address this problem by issuing misinformation corrections. The present experiment helps us understand the cognitive processes, namely attention guided by memory, that contribute to the success of corrections that use misinformation reminders. Reminding people of misinformation before correcting it can be effective in promoting accurate beliefs and memories. This may partly be because repeating false details before correcting them can draw attention to contrasting true details in a correction, leading to improved memory for both. We found those benefits here and, using eye tracking, showed that earlier and more attention to true details following reminders predicted these benefits. Our findings suggest that reminder-based corrections mitigate misinformation exposure partly because they direct attention to true details, thus supporting memories upon which people can base their beliefs. An everyday implication for social media platforms is that corrections may best promote attention and memory when their features contrast true and false information.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.