Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Scientific thinking relies on consideration of alternative possible outcomes to research. We considered whether 1. en-gaging with psychological research resultssome of which were surprisingin a learning phase transferred to considerationof alternative outcomes for a different set of research studies in a test phase, and 2. whether transfer was heightened bypredicting results before learning the actual outcomes (foresight), as opposed to indicating what one would have predictedafter learning the actual outcomes (hindsight). One indication of transfer would be decreased confidence in the outcomeone believed to be true, but we did not observe this trend. However, we did see evidence of transfer for a subset ofparticipants: No participants in the learning phase provided reasons for alternative outcomes, but a sizable minority ofparticipants, across both hindsight and foresight groups, did so in the test phase. We will discuss what factors distinguishparticipants who showed transfer.