The Influences Of Searching Online In The Illusion Of Explanatory Depth

Searching information online is the process of obtaining and retrieving information from the Internet, which reflects the interaction between human beings and the Internet.Previous studies suggest that searching online could cause the inflated illusion of explanatory depth. In other words, people who acquiring and retrieving information online may tend to overestimate their internal memory. Nevertheless, there is no research which examined the influences of different searching approaches on the illusion of explanatory depth, or explored the strategies on reducing it. Based on the prior research,this study conduct a series of experiments to investigate the effects of searching online on the illusion of explanatory depth, and examine the effects of summarizing strategies.In Experiment 1, the influence of searching online on the illusion of explanatory depth was verified. The results of the ANOVA and T-test showed that the differences between the scores of the control group, the answer group and the Internet searching group were significant. The scores of the answer group and the Internet searching group were significantly higher than those of the control group. The scores of the Internet searching group were significantly higher than those of the answer group. Experiment 2 compared the effects of different searching approaches on the illusion of explanatory depth. The results of the ANOVA showed that the differences between the groups were extremely significant. Experiment 3 explored the influences of summarizing strategies at different levels on the illusion of explanatory depth. The results of the ANOVA showed that the differences between the scores of the shallow summarizing group, the deep summarizing group and the Internet searching group were significant.From the experiments mentioned above, the following conclusions can be drawn:(1)Searching explanations online could inflate the illusion of explanatory depth, which means that people tend to overestimate their internal memory and underestimate their reliance on the Internet. (2)Searching explanations online inflates the illusion of explanatory depth, while other searching approaches not. (3)Deep level of summarizing could eliminate the inflated illusion of explanatory depth, while shallow level of summarizing could not.