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Effects Of Elaborative Interrogation After Reading Belief-Inconsistent Arguments And Need For Cognition On Argumentation And Topic Beliefs, Ruomeng Zhao

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Constructing quality argumentation to justify one’s own beliefs on a topic is important both for a thorough topic understanding and the development of argumentation writing skills. Also, one’s change or retention of topic beliefs should be based on quality argumentation, such that the belief can be considered rational. The purpose of this study was to test whether a cognitive strategy, elaborative interrogation, can improve the understanding of belief-inconsistent arguments on a controversial topic and then improve argumentation quality, as well as result in reflective belief change. Elaborative interrogation is a cognitive strategy which prompts individuals to answer “why” questions on …