ACT English & Reading · Topic sentences and introductions
Which choice most effectively introduces the paragraph's claim about the effect's scientific standing?
The Comfort of Hearing It Again
In 1977, researchers ran a study that seemed almost too simple to matter. Participants read a series of trivia statements on separate occasions, weeks apart, and rated how confident they were that each one was true. [1] Statements that appeared only once kept the same confidence rating across sessions. Statements that were repeated, [2] regardless of whether they were actually true, received steadily higher confidence ratings each time they reappeared.
The finding has been replicated so many times since [3] that psychologists now treat it as one of the more reliable effects in the field, known as the illusory truth effect: familiarity, produced simply by repetition, gets mistaken for evidence [4]. The mind, faced with a statement it has technically encountered before, processes it more smoothly than something genuinely new, and that smoothness itself gets misread as a signal that the statement is probably accurate [5].
What makes the effect genuinely unsettling is not that it happens to strangers hearing unfamiliar claims. [6] Later research found that people rate a repeated statement as more believable even when they had explicitly identified it as false the first time they heard it, and even when the source repeating it is one the listener already considers unreliable [7]. Knowing better, in other words, does not reliably prevent the effect from working anyway.
Attempts to counteract this tendency have had limited success. [8] Researchers have tested adding explicit warning labels, flagging a statement as disputed by fact-checkers, directly alongside the repeated claim, and the warnings have not reliably reduced how believable participants rated the statement [9]. Financial incentives for accuracy have not eliminated the effect either.
None of this means repetition is inherently a trick or a flaw in human reasoning. [10] In an ordinary information environment, where most things a person hears repeated actually are true, treating repetition as a rough, usually reliable signal of accuracy is not unreasonable. The trouble only appears in the specific, now common situation where something false gets repeated deliberately and often, exploiting a mental shortcut built for a world where repetition and truth mostly line up.
The finding has been replicated so many times since [3] that psychologists now treat it as one of the more reliable effects in the field, known as the illusory truth effect: familiarity, produced simply by repetition, gets mistaken for evidence [4]. The mind, faced with a statement it has technically encountered before, processes it more smoothly than something genuinely new, and that smoothness itself gets misread as a signal that the statement is probably accurate [5].
What makes the effect genuinely unsettling is not that it happens to strangers hearing unfamiliar claims. [6] Later research found that people rate a repeated statement as more believable even when they had explicitly identified it as false the first time they heard it, and even when the source repeating it is one the listener already considers unreliable [7]. Knowing better, in other words, does not reliably prevent the effect from working anyway.
Attempts to counteract this tendency have had limited success. [8] Researchers have tested adding explicit warning labels, flagging a statement as disputed by fact-checkers, directly alongside the repeated claim, and the warnings have not reliably reduced how believable participants rated the statement [9]. Financial incentives for accuracy have not eliminated the effect either.
None of this means repetition is inherently a trick or a flaw in human reasoning. [10] In an ordinary information environment, where most things a person hears repeated actually are true, treating repetition as a rough, usually reliable signal of accuracy is not unreasonable. The trouble only appears in the specific, now common situation where something false gets repeated deliberately and often, exploiting a mental shortcut built for a world where repetition and truth mostly line up.
Which choice most effectively introduces the paragraph's claim about the effect's scientific standing?
Answer and explanation
Answer: C: that psychologists now treat it as one of the more reliable effects in the field
This choice states precisely the specific, current standing the passage attributes to the finding, one of the more reliable and thoroughly replicated effects in psychology, which matches the passage's own account of extensive replication. Choice D directly contradicts the sentence's own claim about extensive replication. A introduces an unsupported claim about ongoing scientific doubt the passage does not otherwise support. B, in this context, lacks the specific claim about scientific standing that the paragraph's argument needs here.
More Topic sentences and introductions questions
- Question 1Which choice most effectively sets up the contrast the rest of the passage develops?
- Question 5Which choice most effectively introduces the question this paragraph goes on to answer?
- Question 36Which choice most effectively introduces the paragraph's specific claim about prior knowledge?
- Question 38Which choice most effectively introduces the paragraph's discussion of attempted countermeasures?
- Question 41Which choice most effectively concludes the paragraph by introducing the passage's central figure?
- Question 43Which choice most effectively restates the specific goal introduced in the previous sentence?
Learn the method behind questions like this one
The ACT English & Reading course teaches each tested skill through lessons, step-by-step solutions to sample problems, the complete study guide and full-length practice tests.