Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35602734›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in psychology2022

Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness.

Harry J Witchel, Christopher I Jones, Georgina A Thompson, Carina E I Westling, Juan Romero, Alessia Nicotra, Bruno Maag, Hugo D Critchley

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors.

Harry J WitchelDepartment of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, United Kingdom.
Christopher I JonesDepartment of Primary Care and Public Health, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, United Kingdom.
Georgina A ThompsonDepartment of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, United Kingdom.
Carina E I WestlingFaculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, United Kingdom.
Juan RomeroDalton Maag Ltd., London, United Kingdom.
Alessia NicotraDalton Maag Ltd., London, United Kingdom.
Bruno MaagDalton Maag Ltd., London, United Kingdom.
Hugo D CritchleyDepartment of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, United Kingdom.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Background: Spelling errors in documents lead to reduced trustworthiness, but the mechanism for weighing the psychological assessment (i.e., integrative versus dichotomous) has not been elucidated. We instructed participants to rate content of texts, revealing that their implicit trustworthiness judgments show marginal differences specifically caused by spelling errors. Methods: An online experiment with 100 English-speaking participants were asked to rate 27 short text excerpts (∼100 words) about multiple sclerosis in the format of unmoderated health forum posts. In a counterbalanced design, some excerpts had no typographic errors, some had two errors, and some had five errors. Each participant rated nine paragraphs with a counterbalanced mixture of zero, two or five errors. A linear mixed effects model (LME) was assessed with error number as a fixed effect and participants as a random effect. Results: Using an unnumbered scale with anchors of "completely untrustworthy" (left) and "completely trustworthy" (right) recorded as 0 to 100, two spelling errors resulted in a penalty to trustworthiness of 5.91 ± 1.70 (robust standard error) compared to the reference excerpts with zero errors, while the penalty for five errors was 13.5 ± 2.47; all three conditions were significantly different from each other ( Conclusion: Participants who rated information about multiple sclerosis in a context mimicking an online health forum implicitly assigned typographic errors nearly linearly additive trustworthiness penalties. This contravenes any dichotomous heuristic or local ceiling effect on trustworthiness penalties for these numbers of typographic errors. It supports an integrative model for psychological judgments of trustworthiness.

Indexed as

credibilityorthographic errorsspelling errorstrustworthinesstypographic errorswriting mechanics

Identifiers

PMID35602734
PMCPMC9121982

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.