Repeated online exposure, interrupted focus, and retrying after failure

Repeated headlines can feel more accurate

Experiments varied prior exposure to Facebook-style news headlines. Previously seen headlines received higher accuracy ratings, including false headlines, and the difference was observed again one week later. The outcome was judged accuracy, with long-term platform use and task performance outside the study's scope.

• Gordon Pennycook, Tyrone D. Cannon, and David G. Rand · 2018 Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news

Social comparison cues and immediate self-evaluation

In a randomized experiment with 128 undergraduates, participants who viewed a fictitious Facebook profile with a more active social network reported lower immediate state self-esteem. The separate manipulation of the profile owner's health behavior showed no clear effect on that outcome. Exposure was brief and the outcome was self-reported.

• Erin A. Vogel, Jason P. Rose, Lindsay R. Roberts, and Katheryn Eckles · 2014 Social comparison, social media, and self-esteem

Likes and the time to post again

In a 25-minute simulated social platform with 176 participants, researchers changed the number of likes per post between session halves. Participants posted again sooner in the higher-like block. The behavior was consistent with a reward-learning model. The experiment measured neither dopamine nor offline task performance.

• Björn Lindström et al. · 2021 A computational reward learning account of social media engagement

Unanswered phone notifications and attention errors

During a two-block sustained-attention task, researchers sent call or text notifications in the second block. Errors increased more from the first block in the notification conditions. The text group started with a lower error rate and had a second-block rate comparable to the control group. The study did not directly test the mechanism of distraction.

• Cary Stothart, Ainsley Mitchum, and Courtney Yehnert · 2015 The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification

Learning after failure can depend on the feedback

In an adult two-choice task, the subsequent test-score gap between success- and failure-feedback groups was smaller when participants received the correct answer. The interaction for corrective feedback was inconclusive in the primary analysis. The outcome was later test accuracy. Voluntary retrying was outside the study's scope.

• Nina Keith, Dorothee Horvath, Alexander Klamar, and Michael Frese · 2022 Failure to learn from failure is mitigated by loss-framing and corrective feedback: A replication and test of the boundary conditions of the tune-out effect

What direct dopamine recordings measured

Researchers recorded subsecond changes in striatal dopamine in 17 people with Parkinson's disease who performed an investment task during surgery. The signal fit a model combining discrepancies from expected reward with how much the outcome could have differed under another choice. The finding is specific to this clinical sample and task.

• Kenneth T. Kishida et al. · 2016 Subsecond dopamine fluctuations in human striatum encode superposed error signals about actual and counterfactual reward

Exposure, comparison and interruption

Repetition could improve recall while task accuracy and resumption time stay the same. Change comparison cues and notification timing independently in the same feed to see which outcomes move.

Intended versus observed retrying

People may retry after imagining failure or stop after actually falling short. Test whether a concrete correction changes voluntary retrying and accuracy, treating them as distinct outcomes.

What persists after a week and a month

Follow the same participants at days 7 and 30 to measure task resumption and retrying. Estimate contrasts by initial assignment separately from associations with later everyday use, sleep and mood.