Acta Psychologica Sinica ©2022 Chinese Psychological Society

2022, Vol. 54, No. 4, 343354 https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1041.2022.00343

The neural basis of the continued influence effect of misinformation

JIN Hua1,2,3, JIA Lina2, YIN Xiaojuan2, YAN Shizhen2, WEI Shilin2, CHEN Juntao2
(1 Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Academy of Psychology and Behavior,
Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China) (2 Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China)
(3 Tianjin Social Science Laboratory of Students’ Mental Development and Learning, Tianjin 300387, China)

Abstract
In this study, the differences between the activation and functional connectivity conditions of related brain regions by task-fMRI
were analyzed to reveal the neural basis of the CIEM and provided more evidence for the hypothesis of mental-model-updating and
memory-retrieval-failure. The results showed that the inference scores of retraction condition were significantly higher than that of
control condition, and the CIEM exists. In the encoding phase, the activation of left middle temporal gyrus in retraction condition
was significantly weaker than that in control condition. While in the retrieval phase, the activation of middle frontal gyrus and ante-
rior cingulate gyrus was weaker in retraction, and the functional connectivity between middle frontal gyrus and precentral gyrus was
stronger in retraction. The results suggest that the above brain regions may be involved in the formation of the CIEM, and provide
evidence from the neural level that the hypothesis of mental-model-updating and memory-retrieval-failure may explain the different
phases of the CIEM formation.
Key words continued influence effect of misinformation, task-fMRI, inhibition control, functional connectivity

this phenomenon are still unclear. At the cognitive level, men-

1 Introduction
The continued-influence effect of misinformation (CIEM)
refers to the phenomenon that misinformation continues to
influence people’s judgment and reasoning even after it has
been retracted (Gordon et al., 2019; Johnson & Seifert, 1994;
Swire et al., 2017; Wahlheim et al., 2020). The CIEM tradition-
ally uses a paradigm in which individuals read a story that in-
cludes misinformation and retraction and participants then re-
ceive a series of inference questions regarding the story (Ecker
et al., 2017; Rich & Zaragoza, 2016). Inference questions are
usually related to measures taken after the occurrence of the
previous misinformation. For example, the inference question
corresponding to the misinformation “fire” is “measures de-
signed to prevent fires should be reviewed”. The CIEM is
measured by the extent to which participants rely on the misin-
formation when responding to inference questions (Johnson &
Seifert, 1994). Inference questions are also rated on a Likert
point scale (0 = completely disagree ~ 10 = completely agree),
with higher scores denoting stronger reliance on the initial
misinformation (i.e. the larger CIEM) (Ecker et al., 2020; Swire
et al., 2017). There are also studies that manipulate the critical
information with or without misinformation which corresponds
to retraction or control condition. The difference in inference
scores under retraction and control conditions is compared to
indicate the CIEM (Gordon et al., 2017; Rich & Zaragoza,
2016). This design can avoid inflating inference scores or in-
terference with additional factors caused by focusing only on
retraction condition.
Previous studies have proved the existence of the CIEM
(Ecker et al., 2015; Johnson & Seifert, 1994; Rich & Zaragoza,
2016), but the cognitive mechanism and neural basis behind
tal-model-updating and memory-retrieval-failure hypotheses
try to explain this phenomenon (Ecker et al., 2015; Johnson &
Seifert, 1994; Lewandowsky et al., 2012). According to the
mental-model-updating hypothesis, when people read a story or
an event, they build a situation model or mental model struc-
tured around the causal chain of events (Graesser et al., 1994;
Rich & Zaragoza, 2020). Attempts to replace initial misinfor-
mation with retract information threaten a model's internal
coherence, and the occurrence of the CIEM therefore is par-
ticularly due to the poorly encoded retraction or incomplete
integration into the model (Brydges et al., 2018; Gordon et al.,
2019). The memory-retrieval-failure hypothesis based on
memory dual-process theory (Brydges et al., 2018; Rugg &
Curran, 2007), argues that when people encounter questions
about a story, all information relevant to the story, including
both the misinformation and the retraction, can become acti-
vated (Rich & Zaragoza, 2020). A strategic monitoring process
(contrast to an automatic processing, including retrieval of the
context details, evaluation of the output information, etc.) is
then required to determine the validity of this automatically
retrieved information (Lewandowsky et al., 2012), and to pre-
vent the activated misinformation from influencing the reason-
ing process (Brydges et al., 2018). Therefore, the failure of
strategic retrieval processes and the ineffective inhibition of
activated misinformation (Brydges et al., 2020) are the main
reasons leading to the CIEM. Thus, the mental-model-updating
hypothesis focused much more on the encoding or integration
information phase, while the memory-retrieval-failure hypothe-
sis mainly focused on the retrieval information phase. Unfor-
tunately, the traditional behavioral indicators cannot effectively
distinguish between the above two processing phases.

Received Date: May 10, 2021

JIN Hua and JIA Lina are co first authors
Corresponding author: JIN Hua, E-mail: jinhua@tjnu.edu.cn
The original article is in Chinese, translated by Eastrans and proofread by the author. The Chinese version shall always prevail in case of any discrepancy or
inconsistency between the Chinese version and its English translation.
 Acta Psychologica Sinica
At the neural level, the previous studies have attempted to
simultaneously consider the neural basis and cognitive mecha-
nisms of the CIEM (Brydges et al., 2020; Gordon et al., 2017;
Gordon et al., 2019). The basic logic of studies revealing the
CIEM with spatiotemporal features of neuron activations dur-
ing information encoding or retrieval is as follows: if the men-
tal-model-updating hypothesis is reasonable, there is a system-
atic difference during the encoding or integration of retracting
and non-retracting information, and this difference should be
associated with observable changes in brain activity. That is,
compared with non-retracting information, changing traces in
brain activation in certain brain regions during encoding or
integration retraction can provide further empirical evidence for
the model-updating hypothesis of the CIEM. Similarly, if the
memory-retrieval-failure hypothesis is right, there may be dif-
ferences between conditions in functional activities in the brain
areas involving in information selection and inhibition in
memory (e.g., hippocampus and prefrontal cortex) during re-
trieval (Gordon et al., 2017). However, there were few relevant
studies and a great deal of differences between the results. For
example, the results of Gordon et al. (2017) partially support
the mental-model-updating hypothesis of the CIEM. The dif-
ferences in brain activity between retraction and control condi-
tion can be observed during encoding or integration phase.
Critical information in the control conditions elicited more
activities in the right precuneus (extending into the right poste-
rior cingulate cortex and postcentral gyrus) than in the retrac-
tion, but the brain-behavior analysis only found correlation
between neural activity and inference ratings in the control
condition. No significant differences in brain activity emerged
across the two conditions at retrieval phase. However, the
brain-behavior analysis found correlations between neural ac-
tivity and inference ratings both in the retraction and the con-
trol conditions. Yet the findings of Gordon et al. (2019) seem to
support the memory-retrieval-failure hypothesis. They found
that the activity of two brain regions related to memory showed
a difference between conditions in the retrieval phase. Infer-
ence problems elicited enhanced activity in the left angular
gyrus and the bilateral precuneus in the retraction condition
than in the control condition, while no brain-behavior correla-
tion was found. The same is true of the findings from neu-
roelectrophysiology. Brydges and Ecker (2018)1 and Brydges,
Gordon and Ecker (2018)1 found no differences in ERP ampli-
tudes between different conditions. Brydges et al. (2020) found
differences between two conditions in the FN400 at frontal
midline and the LPC at left-parietal during retrieval phase,
which supported the memory-retrieval-failure hypothesis.
It can be seen that the existing studies have not yet obtained
a unified understanding of the theoretical hypothesis and neural
basis of the CIEM. This situation may be related to the meth-
odological differences of various studies. In terms of studies
using fMRI techniques, the research paradigm of Gordon et al.
(2017) is very different from that of Gordon et al. (2019). In the
information encoding or integration phase, Gordon et al. (2017)
used a short fictional news story consisting of 6 sentences as
material. Sentence 2 as the conditional sentence presented mis-
information or neutral information. Sentence 5 was the target
sentence presenting retraction information. However, Gordon et
1 1997). Given that materials used in the CIEM task are short
Brydges and Ecker (2018), Brydges, Gordon and Ecker (2018) are cur-
rently preprints on OSF platforms, not for the journal publication.
al. (2019) shortened the story length to 2 sentences. The first
sentence was a description of an event and a reason, and the
second sentence presented confirmation or retraction informa-
tion. Differences in story length, especially interval in misin-
formation and retraction information, may lead to different
integration of retraction into story contexts (Commander &
Stanwyck, 1997; Wang et al., 2008) and to produce different
neural activities. In the information retrieval phase, Gordon et
al. (2017) adopted the classical CIEM paradigm, measuring the
CIEM by scores of inference questions. If inference scores in
misinformation condition were higher than in control condition,
the expected CIEM would be demonstrated. However, in
Gordon et al. (2019), the experimental paradigm was image-
information matching. The CIEM was measured by individual
responding accuracy (reaction times and drift rates) about im-
age that either matched or mismatched with sentence 2. The
less accurate judgement at mismatching condition demon-
strated that participants still failed to reject the picture contain-
ing misinformation after retraction (i.e., the CIEM exists). The
changing of the CIEM indicator may also alter the information
retrieval process and then alter the difference in neural activity.
Moreover, previous studies have been limited to the analysis of
brain activation localization and have not focused on functional
connectivity among activation regions. Compared with the
activation analysis of a single brain region, functional connec-
tivity analysis can better explore the interaction among brain
regions, so as to clarify the basis of brain network between
different conditions. Therefore, this study will further consider
the brain functional connectivity related to the CIEM.
In addition, the possible contribution of the inhibitory com-
ponent in the cognitive-neural mechanisms of the CIEM has
been ignored in the previous studies. Failure of model-updating
or information retrieval inducing the CIEM may involve inhibi-
tion process. Studies have found that inhibitory control may be
implicated in reading comprehension in real time by managing
the activation of irrelevant information (Butterfuss & Kendeou,
2020; Christopher et al., 2012). Butterfuss and Kendeou (2020)
found that higher-inhibition participants read the target sen-
tences more slowly than low-inhibition participants under con-
ditions that did not refute or explain misinformation, suggesting
higher-inhibition participants may have engaged in extra proc-
essing aimed at resolving the conflict of misinformation. The
fMRI study by Masson et al. (2014) also found that misconcep-
tions processing involved activation of brain areas related to
inhibition control. In the CIEM paradigm, participants may
need to remove or inhibit initial misinformation when process-
ing retraction and promote integration of new information into
an event mental-model. In processing inference problems, it is
also necessary to inhibit previously activated interference in-
formation, so as to extract correct information in memory.
This study performed a region of interest (ROI) analysis to
separate mental-model-updating and memory-retrieval-failure
hypothesis of the CIEM and examine the neural basis of the
CIEM. One class of ROIs was regions associated with semantic
and error inhibition, including the left ventrolateral prefrontal
cortex (L_VLPFC, BA45), left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
(L_DLPFC, BA9), right anterior cingulate cortex (R_ACC,
BA32) and left middle frontal gyrus (L_MFG, BA10) (Collette
& Linden, 2002; Masson et al., 2014; Nathaniel-James et al.,
stories, retraction of misinformation may first (or simultane-
 JIN Hua et al.: The neural basis of the continued influence effect of misinformation
ously) require sentences comprehension and discourse integra-
tion. In order to further clarify whether the encoding process of
retraction involves only inhibition or also discourse processing,
we also defined regions associated with text (information)
comprehension as another type of ROIs to further separate the
unique role of inhibition. Based on a meta-analysis of fMRI
imaging studies on discourse comprehension by Yang et al.
(2019), the regions related to text comprehension include the
left inferior frontal gyrus (L_IFG, BA45/47), left middle tem-
poral gyrus (L_MTG, BA21/22) and left medial frontal gyrus
(L_MFG, BA6) etc. Similarly, besides the regions associated
with inhibition in retrieval phase, the general semantic retrieval
processes also need to be considered. The fMRI studies related
to general semantic retrieval have found that the left hippo-
campus and bilateral parahippocampal gyrus generally have
activation in semantic memory retrieval (Hoscheidt et al.,
2010). So to clarify whether neural processing is also related to
general semantic memory retrieval in retrieval phase, we also
adopt the left hippocampus and bilateral parahippocampal
gyrus as ROIs. The in-depth study on the cognitive-neural
mechanism of the CIEM is conducive to a clearer understand-
ing of the causes of CIEM, which can provide more evidence
for existing theoretical hypotheses and further clarify the action
phases of corresponding hypotheses.
In summary, based on hypothesis of integration updating
failure and memory retrieval failure, the study would adopt the
classical paradigm of the CIEM and fMRI technology to inves-
tigate the neural basis and cognitive mechanism of the CIEM
from views of semantic processing and interference informa-
tion inhibition. Because the fMRI experiment needs to set base-
line conditions to achieve inter-condition comparison, and to
avoid the larger head movement caused by too long scanning
time, this study mainly refers to the experimental paradigm of
Gordon et al. (2017). This paradigm uses brief stories and in-
cludes control conditions, which also measured the CIEM by
typical inference problems. This paradigm thus is easy to ma-
nipulate variables and effectively reveal the possible cause of
CIEM. We proposed the following hypotheses based on the
previous studies and the above reviews: 1) inference scores
under retraction condition will be significantly higher than
under control condition, suggesting the existing of CIEM in
behavior; 2) with regard to neural basis-cognitive mechanism,
mental-model-updating hypothesis and memory-retrieval-failure
hypothesis may explain the different phase of the CIEM. The
specific manifestations are as follows: ① the CIEM is related
to abnormal activation in brain regions responsible for text
processing or inhibition control in the encoding phase. That is,
individuals fail to effectively encode current semantic informa-
tion or inhibit previous misinformation, resulting in incomplete
or failed information integration and updating of mental models.
It would support the mental-model-updating hypothesis; ② the
occurrence of CIEM would also accompany with abnormal
activation in brain regions responsible for semantic retrieval or
semantic inhibition in the retrieval phase. That is, individuals
would fail to effectively retrieve semantic information or in-
hibit irrelevant semantic information, resulting in invalid or
failed information retrieval. It would support the hypothesis of
memory retrieval failure; ③ The brain regions related to text
comprehension, semantic retrieval and inhibition would show
changes in functional connectivity at the encoding or retrieval
phase, suggesting that the occurrence of CIEM may be related
to the interaction between brain regions at the corresponding
phase, which would provide more evidence for mental-
model-updating and memory-retrieval-failure hypothesis.
2 Method
2.1 Participants
31 participants (10 males, Mage = 21.23 years, SDage = 1.77)
took part in this study. Data from six participants were removed
from the fMRI analyses for excessive head motion during
scanning (exceeded 3 mm and 1.5°). All participants had nor-
mal or corrected-to-normal vision. None of the participants
reported a history of neurological or psychiatric disorders and
contraindication in MRI. All participants provided written in-
formed consent and were paid for their participation.
2.2 Stimuli
The experimental materials were adapted from the Gordon
et al. (2017). Gordon et al. (2017) used a total of 22 fictional
news stories. In order to avoid the understanding ambiguity
caused by cultural differences, some stories had been modified,
such as replacing foreign place names with “a city” or “an
area”. In view of the BOLD signal containing high background
noise, a certain number of event-related signals need to be su-
perimposed on average to obtain the valid signal. Thus, on the
basis of the existing materials of Gordon et al. (2017), similar
fictional news stories were written, increasing the number of
materials to 40 stories. Each news story was six sentences long
and two different versions were created that differed only in the
content of sentence 2. The control version had no misinforma-
tion in sentence 2, while the retraction version contained mis-
information in sentence 2. Sentence 5 in the retraction version
was the retract information, while sentence 5 in control version
was transitional sentence because no misinformation was pre-
sented in previous sentences.
The critical sentence (i.e., sentence 5) and inference ques-
tions were identical in both versions. Inference questions used a
9-point scale from “1 = strongly disagree” to “9 = strongly
agree” to measure participants’ reliance on misinformation (i.e.,
the CIEM). This manipulation ensured that the target sentences
for inter-conditions comparisons were identical, avoiding the
possibility that the observed difference between conditions
might be caused by the difference in the content and valence of
the target sentence. Each four stories with similar themes also
had the same inference problems in the 40 stories, such as the
story “fire in the building” and “fire in the cabin” of the corre-
sponding retraction was “investigation found no evidence of a
fire”, the inference problem was “it is necessary for the fire
services to be at the scene” etc. (see Appendix). It could mini-
mize the interference with results due to differences in target
sentences among different stories. Furthermore, it has been
found that familiarity of information can affect the CIEM
(Swire et al., 2017). Since this study mainly compared the dif-
ferences in inference scores under the retraction and control
condition, the familiarity of the control condition as a baseline
was expected to match the retraction. So 20 participants (not
participating in the formal fMRI scanning, 5 males, mean age =
22.05 ± 3.19 years) assessed the familiarity of the first two
sentences of all stories (1 = completely unfamiliar, 7 = fully
familiar). No significant difference was found in familiarity
under control and retraction conditions, (4.13 ± 0.40 vs. 4.21 ±
0.36), t(39) = −1.05, p = 0.30. All sentences were controlled at
10~14 words length. For each story, half of the participants
 Acta Psychologica Sinica
read its control version and the other half of participants read
its retraction version. All stories were presented pseudo-ran-
domly, with each story as a trial in the experiment and 40 trials
for each participant. Based on the previous research (Gordon et
al., 2017), the study focused on the encoding phase (i.e., proc-
essing of sentence 5) and retrieval phase (i.e., processing of the
inference problems).
2.3 fMRI task and procedure
Participants were required to practice on the computer out-
side the magnet before the formal experiment to be familiar
with the experimental process. All practice materials were not
appeared in the formal scans. Meanwhile, participants were
instructed to respond to inference questions by indicating num-
bers 1 to 9 through their own habitual gestures. Participants re-
peated gestures practice in the fMRI simulator until they met
the requirement before entering the fMRI chamber. During
gestures practice, participants were required to lie flat and
change the number of extended fingers indicating 1 to 9 while
keeping their arms and wrists as still as possible. The formal
scan contained four functional runs, and there was a short rest
between runs without head movement. The entire scan took
about 50 minutes to complete.
A fast event-related design (jittered) was adopted. The be-
ginning of each trial was presented by a red exclamation mark
(!). The first four sentences in a story were appeared (7.5 s)
automatically after 0.5 s. Then 1~6 s fixation “+” was presented,
followed by sentences and “+” until the end of the story. A
question mark (?) was presented on screen for 0.5 s before in-
ferences problems, followed by inference sentence 1 for 2 s.
Then a response scale (9-point) was shown on screen for 4 s
after 2~6 s “+”, followed by inference sentences 2 and 3 after
the jitter of 2 to 6s (see Figure 1).
2.4 Image acquisition
Image data were acquired by Siemens Prisma 3.0 T mag-
netic resonance scanner and 64-channel head coil at Tianjin
Normal University. Participants were placed in the supine posi-
tion with spongy pads placed in the coil to fix their heads.
Stimuli were presented with E-Prime 2.0 software via a mirror
and a projection system. Functional images were obtained with
an echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence (TR = 2000 ms, TE =
30 ms, flip angle = 90°, field of view (FOV) = 224 mm × 224
mm, matrix size = 64×64, slice thickness = 3.5 mm, slice gap =
0.7 mm, number of slices = 33). A high resolution T1-weighted
structural imaging was acquired with the MPRAGE sequence
(TR = 2530 ms, TE = 2.98 ms, flip angle = 7°, FOV = 256 mm ×
256 mm, matrix size = 256×256, slice thickness = 1 mm).
2.5 fMRI data preprocessing
Imaging data were preprocessed using DPABI V4.2 soft-
ware (Yan et al., 2016) implemented in Matlab R2015a. The
first 5 images of each scanning were removed for signal equi-
librium and the adaptation to the fMRI environment. Then slice
Figure 1. Experimental flow diagram
timing and head motion correction were performed. The struc-
tural images of each participant were registered into the aver-
age functional images, and functional images were normalized
to the MNI (Montreal Neurological Institute) space using
DARTEL in space standardization. Functional images were
then spatially smoothed with 8-mm full width at half maximum
(FWHM) Gaussian kernel.
3 Data analysis
3.1 Behavioral analysis
The behavioral data were analyzed by SPSS 25. Paired-t test
was conducted for dependent variable (inference scores). If
retraction of misinformation was not sufficient to bring ratings
back to a baseline level (control condition), then it indicated
that participants partially depend on the misinformation to
make judgment in inference process, i.e., there is a CIEM. We
used statistical p < 0.05 as the threshold.
3.2 fMRI analysis
This study mainly compared the brain activation differences
between control and retraction conditions in the encoding and
retrieval phase. Brain imaging data would be analyzed at two
levels: ROI-based analysis and brain-behavior correlations; and
the seed-based functional connectivity analysis with common
method of task-fMRI functional connectivity analysis-psy-
chophysiological interaction (PPI) (Di et al., 2021).
3.2.1 ROI-based analysis and correlation with behavior
Functional data after preprocessing were analyzed using
general linear model (GLM). As mentioned above, the proc-
essing phase given serious attention in this study was the brain
BOLD signal in processing retraction (encoding phase) and
inference problems (retrieval phase). At the first level, GLM
implemented in SPM 12 (http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm) was
applied for each participant’s signal in the encoding and re-
trieval phase, respectively. Six head motion parameters, obtained
by head motion correction, were included as nuisance regressors.
As mentioned above, based on previous studies (Masson et
al., 2014; Yang et al., 2019) , our ROIs included left IFG
(BA45/47), MTG (BA21/22) and MFG (BA6), which associ-
ated with information encoding processing. The following re-
gions were also included: the left VLPFC (BA45, partial over-
lap with inferior frontal gyrus), left DLPFC (BA9), right ACC
(BA32) and left MFG (BA10). These regions used Brodmann
areas (BA) as template. Meanwhile, the BA template did not
clearly divide the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus, so
the left hippocampus (37) and bilateral parahippocampal gyrus
(39/40) combined Anatomical Automatic Labeling (AAL) tem-
plate. Masks creating were implemented in RESTplus V1.24
(Jia et al., 2019) and DPABI V4.2 software was used to extract
BOLD signal from ROI across conditions. SPSS 25 was used
for statistical analysis to compare the difference between each
ROI activation signal values, with p < 0.05 as the threshold.
 JIN Hua et al.: The neural basis of the continued influence effect of misinformation
Analysis of brain-behavior correlations focused on the rela-
tionship between brain activities in the encoding and retrieval
phase and participants’ scores on the inference problems. Brain
imaging data were BOLD signal values extracted from each
ROI, and behavioral data were mean of the three inference
questions corresponding to each story. Correlations analysis
was implemented in SPSS 25 to examine change trends of
brain-behavior correlations, with p < 0.05 as the threshold.
3.2.2 Seed-based functional connectivity
In the PPI analysis, seed regions were selected to investigate
the functional connectivity between the seed regions and other
brain areas of the whole brain under specific conditions. PPI
analysis included seed regions definition, time series extraction,
PPI modeling analysis at first-level, and comparison of func-
tional connections at group-level. Based on the previous results,
the small-volume correction (SVC) (Steuwe et al., 2015) was
used to find the peak coordinates of seed regions, and the SVC
threshold was set at uncorrected p < 0.005. Each seed region
defined by a sphere with 6 mm radius centered at the peak
voxel to investigate the connectivity of each seed region to the
other brain regions under different conditions. PPI analysis was
performed in SPM 12. The GLM of PPI includes: (1) main
effect of seed region activation; (2) main effect of experimental
conditions; and (3) interaction of seed region activation and
experimental conditions. Six head motion parameters were also
included in GLM to avoid minor impact on the signal. Psycho-
physiological interaction was the variables mainly focused,
which were included into the group-level analysis. Functional
connectivity used multiple corrections (FWE p < 0.05), and the
extension threshold was 50 voxels.
4 Results
4.1 Behavior results
Analysis of inference scores found that the scores of retrac-
tion condition (4.48 ± 1.27) was significantly higher than that
of control condition without misinformation (3.98 ± 1.20), t(30) =
3.94, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.71, 95% CI [0.24, 0.75] (see
Figure 2). This suggested that retraction of misinformation was
not sufficient to bring inference scores back to a baseline level,
demonstrating a significant reliance on the misinformation in
the inference judgment, namely a significant CIEM.
Figure 3. Activation differences at left MTG in encoding phase
Figure 2. Results of behavioral inference scores
4.2 fMRI results
4.2.1 Inter-condition differences in ROI activation and
correlation
Paired-t tests were conducted to analyze ROIs’ signals be-
tween different conditions during the encoding phase. The re-
sult revealed a significant activation difference between retrac-
tion and control condition in the left MTG (BA21, 22), (BA21:
t(24) = 2.34, p = 0.03, Cohen’s d = 0.47, 95% CI [0.03, 0.48];
BA22: t(24) = 2.26, p = 0.03, Cohen’s d = 0.45, 95% CI [0.02,
0.48]) (see Figure 3). No significant activation differences
across conditions were found in the other ROIs associated with
inhibitory control and discourse comprehension.
The same analysis was performed in the retrieval phase. The
comparison results (see Figure 4) showed that activations of the
following brain regions under the retraction condition was sig-
nificantly weaker than that of the control condition: the left
MFG (BA10), t(24) = 2.39, p = 0.03, Cohen’s d = 0.48, 95% CI
[0.04, 0.55]; right ACC (BA32), t(24) = 2.24, p = 0.04, Cohen’s
d = 0.45, 95% CI [0.01, 0.28]. And also the region showed a
significant marginal difference between conditions: left DLPFC
(BA9), t(24) = 2.05, p = 0.05, Cohen’s d = 0.41, 95% CI
[−0.001, 0.40]. No significant differences between conditions
were found in the VLPFC (BA45) associated with inhibition
and in the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus associated
with general semantic information retrieval.
Correlation analysis was conducted between individual be-
havioral inference scores and beta values of brain regions
showing inter-condition differences. It was found that the beta
value in the left MFG in retraction condition had marginal
 Acta Psychologica Sinica

Figure 4. Activation differences at left MFG, right ACC and left DLPFC in retrieval phase

significant negative correlation with the inference scores, r = −0.38,
p = 0.06 (see Figure 5). It was shown that when the activation
change in this region was small, the higher behavioral inference
scores meant greater reliance on misinformation, namely the
greater CIEM. No significant correlations were found between
behavior data and beta values in the left MTG associated with
discourse comprehension, and in other brain regions associated
with inhibition, p > 0.05.
right ACC and the rest of the brain regions was compared under
the control and retraction condition at the retrieval phase. Re-
sults demonstrated that the right ACC showed decreased func-
tional connectivity with the bilateral Inferior Occipital Gyrus
(L/R_IOG) during control > retraction conditions (pFWE < 0.05)
(see Table 1 and Figure 6). The reverse compare (control <
retraction), however, failed to yield any supra-threshold activa-
tions.

Table 1
Between-condition comparisons of functional connectivity with
right ACC as seed region
Peak MNI coordinates
Regions Voxels Peak t value
x y z
control > retraction
Left inferior occipital gyrus 166 −24.5 −91 −7 10.11
right inferior occipital gyrus 123 21 −84 −7 10.10
control < retraction
No supra-threshold activation
Note. p < 0.05 (FWE corrections), k > 50; the same below.

Figure 5. Relationship between left MFG and behavioral infer-

ence scores

4.2.2 Inter-condition differences in functional connectivity

According to the previous results, the left MFG and right
ACC related to the retrieval phase and the left MTG related to
the encoding phase were defined as seeds in functional connec-
tivity analysis. SVC obtained peak coordinates for the left
MTG (MNI: −60, −35, −11), right ACC (MNI: 0, 46, 28) and Figure 6. Functional connectivity activation with right ACC as
left MFG (MNI: −32, 63, 0). seed region (ACC = anterior cingulate cortex; IOG = inferior oc-
The difference in the functional connectivity between the cipital gyrus; L = left; R = right)
 JIN Hua et al.: The neural basis of the continued influence effect of misinformation
Similarly, the difference in the functional connectivity be-
tween the left MFG and the rest of the brain regions was com-
pared under the control and retraction condition at the retrieval
phase. It also showed decreased connectivity with the bilateral
IOG during control > retraction conditions; while increased
functional connectivity with right precentral gyrus (R_PcG) for
the control < retraction conditions (see Table 2 and Figure 7).
Finally, functional connectivity analysis on the left MTG re-
vealed no significant results in the encoding phase.
Table 2
Between-condition comparisons of functional connectivity with left
MFG as seed region
Peak MNI coordinates
Regions Voxels Peak t value
x y z condition at semantic encoding phase of target sentence, sug-
control > retraction
Left inferior occipital gyrus 158 −17.5 −94.5 −7 10.34
Right inferior occipital gyrus 101 21 −84 −7
control < retraction
Right precentral gyrus 61 35 −17.5 49
Figure 7. Functional connectivity activation with left MFG as
seed region (MFG = middle frontal gyrus; PcG = precentral gyrus)
5 Discussion
Combined with the classical paradigm of the CIEM and
task-fMRI technology, this study discussed the possible neural
basis and cognitive mechanism of the CIEM from the perspec-
tive of inhibitory control and semantic processing. Behavioral
results were in line with the previously researches (Gordon et
al., 2017; Rich & Zaragoza, 2016) and hypothesis 1, which
found that inference scores in the retraction condition was sig-
nificantly higher than that in the control conditions. It indicated
that the misinformation was not completely retracted, and par-
ticipants still partial relied on misinformation for judgment (i.e.
a significant CIEM). The fMRI results found that there were no
activation differences across conditions in the brain regions
responsible for inhibition at encoding or integration phase of
information. There was activation difference across conditions
in the left MFG and right ACC in the information retrieval
phase and this difference was related with inference scores. The
activation of the left MTG associated with reading comprehen-
sion differed under different conditions in the information en-
coding or integration phase. Further, functional connectivity
analysis also found that the functional connectivity of the right
ACC and the bilateral IOG, the left MFG and right PcG were
different under different conditions. The results suggested that
changes in activation of the left MTG during information en-
coding or integration of retraction information, and changes in
activation (including functional connectivity) of the right ACC
and left MFG during information retrieval may be the neural
basis of the CIEM. The occurrence of the CIEM is not only
related to the encoding or integration of information in the
process of text reading, but also related to the process of infor-
mation retrieval after reading. The mental-model-updating and
memory-retrieval failure hypothesis may explain the different
phases of the CIEM.
5.1 Neural basis of the CIEM
The left MTG、left MFG and right ACC may involve in the
CIEM formation at different phases of information processing.
Only the left MTG related to text comprehension showed
weaker activation in the retraction condition than in the control
gesting that the left MTG may involve in the CIEM during
encoding or integration phase of retraction, which is consistent
with  in hypothesis 2. The MTG is generally associated with
8.95 general reading comprehension (Weber et al., 2019; Yang et al.,
2019). Weber et al. (2019) found that the left MTG activated
stronger during silently reading sentences than pseudo word
8.44
lists in a language localizer task with the whole-brain analysis.
The encoding phase only involved the brain region of text
processing and had weaker activation in the retraction condi-
tion, which is consistent with the findings of contextual consis-
tency in discourse comprehension (van Moort et al., 2020). van
Moort et al. (2020) found that the text-based inconsistencies
elicited weaker neural responses, and speculated that it might
be due to the fact that the target sentence was not completely
contradictory to the preceding text. We assumed that this phase
may be more about text-based comprehension processes and
more sensitive to congruency (control) condition only. At the
same time, the less activation and inactivation of inhibi-
tion-related regions in the retraction condition may be due to
the conflict or contradiction between contextual information
during processing do not reach the level of initiating inhibitory
control. The results also suggest that the processing abnormali-
ties of the retraction may be related to functional changes in
semantic processing brain areas during discourse comprehen-
sion instead of functional changes in inhibiting-related brain
regions.
The left MFG and right ACC showed similar inter-condition
differences in activation and functional connectivity during
retrieval phase, suggesting that these two brain regions may be
involved in the CIEM at the retrieval phase. These results are
consistent with ② and ③ in hypothesis 2. The functional
connectivity in general control networks is considered to be
relevant to reading (Jolles et al., 2020). Yuan et al. (2021) found
that bilingual language control and general cognitive control
had overlapping brain network (e.g., dorsal anterior cingulate
cortex, etc.) in the process of conflict detection and inhibition
control. The phenomenon of lower brain activity in experimen-
tal condition than in control may suggested a task-induced
neuronal suppression (Morita et al., 2019). Most previous stud-
ies have found that increased activation in related regions of
inhibitory control was associated with successful inhibitory
control (Hinault et al., 2019). Cohen-Gilbert et al. (2017) re-
quired 23 healthy college students to finish the task of inhibi-
tion control during fMRI scan. Results showed that decreased
activations in the DLPFC, DMPFC (included MFG) and ACC
were significantly associated with higher binge drinking in the
 Acta Psychologica Sinica
prior 3 months during negative relative to neutral inhibitory
trials. Additionally, the current results are also consistent with
“the lower activation in retraction condition” found by Gordon
et al (2017). They found that retraction elicited less activity in
the right precuneus at the encoding phase, and assumed that
this activation reduction might be linked to integration difficul-
ties. Taken together, decreased activation of the left MFG and
right ACC may reflect failure or difficulty in inhibiting execu-
tion in this condition. The weakened functional connectivity
between the left MFG and right ACC with the bilateral IOG in
the retraction condition may be associated with weakening of
general text information processing. The IOG was found to be
related to visual text reading (Jin et al., 2009). Jin et al. (2009)
found strong bilateral activation in the middle and inferior oc-
cipital lobe during story-reading and predictive inference. In
the retraction condition, there is not only visual reading and
general judgment but also inhibition of misinformation, which
may relatively weaken the connectivity with the IOG and en-
hance connectivity with inhibition-related regions.
Stronger functional connectivity between the left MFG and
right PcG during information retrieval under the retraction con-
dition also supports the above explanation. The PcG was also
thought to be closely related to cognitive control, inhibition, etc.
(Li et al., 2006; Ragland et al., 2002). With a stop-signal task of
response inhibition, Li et al. (2006) found that more efficient
response inhibition was associated with middle frontal and
precentral frontal cortices etc. It needs to be pointed out that,
although the enhancement of functional connectivity among
brain regions associated with inhibition under retraction condi-
tion is in response to the need to inhibit misinformation, it may
not be able to “achieve what you want”. Akkermans et al. (2018)
revealed that smokers had stronger functional connectivity
among brain regions associated with inhibition, but they per-
formed poorly in the task of response inhibition.
The results of this study are not completely consistent with
those of Gordon et al. (2017). The study of Gordon et al. (2017)
may reduce the detection power of the experimental design due
to the lower signal-to-noise ratio caused by slightly less number
of participants and stimuli. They recruited 23 valid participants,
and used only 11 stimuli in each condition.
5.2 Implications for the CIEM cognitive hypothesis
As mentioned above, there are currently two main theories
trying to explain the CIEM. One is the hypothesis of “men-
tal-model-updating”. It is believed that the occurrence of the
CIEM is mainly due to abnormal encoding or integration of
retraction information at the encoding phase. The other is the
hypothesis of “memory retrieval failure”, emphasizing anomaly
in the processing of inference problems at the retrieval phase.
Thus, the activation differences at the encoding phase may be
more likely to support the hypothesis of the “mental-model-
updating”, while the differences at the retrieval phase may be
more likely to support the hypothesis of “memory-retrieval-
failure”.
The finding that the left MTG related to reading compre-
hension has inter-condition differences in activation at informa-
tion encoding or integration supports the hypothesis of “men-
tal-model-updating”. In situational or mental model updating,
readers may try to eliminate conflict or incompatibility when
the context information is inconsistent (Wang et al., 2006).
Therefore, it is possible that updating a mental model in retrac-
tion condition also involves the process of inhibiting control.
This study observed no inter-condition differences in activation
or functional connectivity in brain regions responsible for inhi-
bition, suggesting that the CIEM may be related to abnormal
information encoding rather than abnormal information inte-
gration at the encoding phase. It further clarifies the explana-
tion of the “mental-model-updating” hypothesis for the CIEM.
At the level of text comprehension, however, which cognitive
component results in the encoding anomaly (e.g., the failure or
no startup of situational model updating, etc.) requires new
experimental design to explore.
At the retrieval phase, inter-condition differences in activa-
tion in the brain regions for general semantic information re-
trieval such as the hippocampus were not significant, and only
inter-condition differences in activation and functional connec-
tivity in the brain regions for inhibition (left MFG and right
ACC) were found. The results support the “memory-retrieval-
failure” hypothesis and further clarify the content of “memory-
retrieval-failure”. This failure may be not a general retrieval
failure of semantic information but likely a suppression failure
of distracting semantic information. Based on the dual-process
theory of memory (Brydges et al., 2018; Rugg & Curran, 2007),
the retrieval failure hypothesis supposes that both valid (retract
information) and invalid information (misinformation) be
automatically activated during retrieval process. And either
failure of strategic retrieval or no strategic retrieval during pro-
cessing will lead to the CIEM (Ecker et al., 2011; Lew-
andowsky et al., 2012). From the view of inhibition, our results
prove that strategic retrieval may be performed in retraction,
because the brain areas related to inhibition were activated at
the retrieval phase. However, the inhibition failure or imperfec-
tion reflected by the weaker activation and the increased con-
nectivity strength in the regions for inhibition at the retrieval
phase may result in participants’ continued reliance on the pre-
vious misinformation. The negative correlation of activation
beta values in the inhibitory-related region (MFG) with infer-
ence scores also partially supports the above interpretation.
To sum up, the occurrence of the CIEM may be related to
both the failure of encoding in the process of information com-
prehension and the failure of retrieval in the process of infor-
mation retrieval. The mental-model-updating and memory-
retrieval-failure hypothesis may explain the different phases of
the CIEM formation. However, at present, it is necessary to
further explore the more precise mechanism, such as whether
the failures of encoding and retrieval play different and deci-
sive roles in the occurrence of the CIEM.
5.3 Limitations and future studies
Our findings provide more abundant experimental evidence
for clarifying the neural basis of the CIEM and refine the theo-
retical hypothesis of the CIEM, but this study also has the fol-
lowing limitations. Firstly, referring to the paradigm of Gordon
et al. (2017), the baseline was set as a control condition without
misinformation. Although the within-item design avoids the
signal pollution caused by differences in physical features and
semantics of target sentences under different conditions, it also
has some shortcomings. The information of sentence 5 (target
sentence) and sentence 2 (condition sentence) was partially
repeated in the retraction condition, while their information was
not repeated in the control condition. The observed in-
ter-condition differences in brain activation may also be mixed
with the difference in information repeatability between these
conditions. However, the inter-condition differences in brain
 JIN Hua et al.: The neural basis of the continued influence effect of misinformation
activation of target sentences observed here are unlikely to be
caused by the different information repeatability between these
target sentences and corresponding condition sentences. The
information enhancement effect of vocabulary or sentence
repetition primarily elicited increased activity in relevant brain
regions (Wang et al., 2016; Weber et al., 2016), whereas our
study found decreased activation in certain regions in the re-
traction condition. In any case, it is necessary for future re-
search to further improve the material setting to directly ex-
clude the above possibilities.
Secondly, the study mainly focused on inhibition-related
brain regions, while the processing of interference (misinfor-
mation) inhibition may also involve the monitoring and resolv-
ing of conflict information. For example, meta-analysis by Li et
al. (2017) found that conflict monitoring and conflict resolution
involved a combination of domain-general and domain-specific
cognitive control network. There is a conflict between the re-
traction information and the initial misinformation in the cur-
rent paradigm, which may involve different phases of conflict
processing (conflict monitoring and conflict resolution). The
brain regions included in this study only partially overlap with
those discovered by Li et al. (2017) (such as DLPFC, ACC,
etc.). Future study could consider other cognitive control re-
gions, such as the superior and inferior parietal cortex in the
fronto-parietal network, to reveal the neural basis of the CIEM
more comprehensively. In addition, some studies have found
that cognitive ability affects retraction effects (De Keers-
maecker & Roets, 2017), while inhibition ability predicts read-
ing ability (Doyle et al., 2018). In the future, the relationship
between inhibitory control and the CIEM can be proved more
directly by examining the differences in neural basis of indi-
viduals with different inhibitory control abilities in the CIEM.
Finally, this study focused on the general process of the
neural basis of CIEM, and adopted a brief retraction. However,
a large number of the CIEM behavioral studies have explored
more retraction methods such as detailed explanation (Ecker et
al., 2020; Swire et al., 2017) and information sources (Ecker &
Antonio, 2021), etc. The future study could explore whether the
effectiveness of retraction methods is related to neural activity
during information processing or retrieval.
6 Conclusions
This study investigated the brain activation characteristics of
the CIEM in brain regions related to semantic comprehension
and inhibition, and its relationship with behavioral indicators
and changes in the strength of brain function connectivity by
task-fMRI. The results showed that the occurrence of CIEM
was not only related to the weakened activation of the left
MTG during information encoding, but also to the weakened
activation of the left MFG and right ACC during information
retrieval, the weakened functional connectivity between the left
MFG (right ACC) and IOG, and the enhanced functional con-
nectivity between the left MFG and right PcG. The findings
suggest that the occurrence of CIEM may be related to both the
failure of semantic encoding during information comprehen-
sion and the failure of inhibition of misinformation retrieval
during information retrieval. The hypothesis of men-
tal-model-updating and memory-retrieval-failure may explain
the different phases of the CIEM formation.
Acknowledgements: The data collection and analysis process
of this study has received the help and guidance of Wang
Zhengguang, Zhao Guang, Zhang Peng, Li Chengshi, Zhang
Qihan, Wang Qiang, Xu Zhansheng, Liu Ting, Liang Ziping, Shao
Mengling, Zhu Ziliang, Zhang Yuping, Jin Xiaokang, Wang
Chao, etc. Thank you together. At the same time, we are very
grateful to all the participants for their support to this study.
References
Akkermans, S. E. A., Luijten, M., van Rooij, D., Franken, I. H. A., &
Buitelaar, J. K. (2018). Putamen functional connectivity during in-
hibitory control in smokers and non-smokers. Addiction Biology,
23(1), 359−368.
Brydges, C., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2018, July 17). Updating misinforma-
tion in memory after correction: An event-related potentials (ERP)
study. OSF, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/VKZXM
Brydges, C., Gordon, A., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2018, July 18). Exploring
the electrophysiological correlates of the continued influence effect
of misinformation. PsyArXiv, https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/4zjyh
Brydges, C. R., Gignac, G. E., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2018). Working memory
capacity, short-term memory capacity, and the continued influence
effect: A latent-variable analysis. Intelligence, 69, 117−122.
Brydges, C. R., Gordon, A., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2020). Electrophysio-
logical correlates of the continued influence effect of misinforma-
tion: An exploratory study. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 32(8),
771−784.
Butterfuss, R., & Kendeou, P. (2020). Reducing interference from
misconceptions: The role of inhibition in knowledge revision.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(4), 782−794.
Christopher, M. E., Miyake, A., Keenan, J. M., Pennington, B., Defries,
J. C., Wadsworth, S. J., Willcutt, E., & Olson, R. K. (2012). Pre-
dicting word reading and comprehension with executive function
and speed measures across development: A latent variable analysis.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(3), 470−488.
Cohen-Gilbert, J. E., Nickerson, L. D., Sneider, J. T., Oot, E. N., Serai-
kas, A. M., Rohan, M. L., & Silveri, M. M. (2017). College binge
drinking associated with decreased frontal activation to negative
emotional distractors during inhibitory control. Frontiers in Psy-
chology, 8, 1650.
Collette, F., & van der Linden, M. (2002). Brain imaging of the central
executive component of working memory. Neuroscience and
Biobehavioral Reviews, 26(2), 105−125.
Commander, N. E., & Stanwyck, D. J. (1997). Illusion of knowing in
adult readers: Effects of reading skill and passage length. Contem-
porary Educational Psychology, 22(1), 39−52.
De Keersmaecker, J., & Roets, A. (2017). “Fake news”: Incorrect, but
hard to correct. The role of cognitive ability on the impact of false
information on social impressions. Intelligence, 65, 107−110.
Di, X., Zhang, Z., & Biswal, B. B. (2021). Understanding psycho-
physiological interaction and its relations to beta series correlation.
Brain Imaging and Behavior, 15(2), 958−973.
Doyle, C., Smeaton, A. F., Roche, R. A. P., & Boran, L. (2018). Inhibi-
tion and updating, but not switching, predict developmental dys-
lexia and individual variation in reading ability. Frontiers in Psy-
chology, 9, 795−795.
Ecker, U. K. H., & Antonio, L. M. (2021). Can you believe it? An in-
vestigation into the impact of retraction source credibility on the
continued influence effect. Memory & Cognition, 49(4), 631−644.
Ecker, U. K. H., Hogan, J. L., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Reminders
and repetition of misinformation: Helping or hindering its retrac-
tion?. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(2),
185−192.
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Cheung, C. S. C., & Maybery, M. T.
(2015). He did it! she did it! no, she did not! multiple causal expla-
nations and the continued influence of misinformation. Journal of
Memory and Language, 85, 101−115.
 Acta Psychologica Sinica
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Swire, B., & Chang, D. (2011).
Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength
of misinformation encoding and its retraction. Psychonomic Bulle-
tin & Review, 18(3), 570−578.
Ecker, U. K. H., O’Reilly, Z., Reid, J. S., & Chang, E. P. (2020). The
effectiveness of short-format refutational fact-checks. British Jour-
nal of Psychology, 111(1), 36−54.
Gordon, A., Brooks, J. C. W., Quadflieg, S., Ecker, U. K. H., &
Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Exploring the neural substrates of misin-
formation processing. Neuropsychologia, 106, 216−224.
Gordon, A., Quadflieg, S., Brooks, J. C. W., Ecker, U. K. H., &
Lewandowsky, S. (2019). Keeping track of ‘alternative facts’: The
neural correlates of processing misinformation corrections. Neuro-
Image, 193, 46−56.
Graesser, A. C., Singer, M., & Trabasso, T. (1994). Constructing infer-
ences during narrative text comprehension. Psychological Review,
101(3), 371−395.
Hinault, T., Larcher, K., Zazubovits, N., Gotman, J., & Dagher, A.
(2019). Spatio-temporal patterns of cognitive control revealed with
simultaneous electroencephalography and functional magnetic res-
onance imaging. Human Brain Mapping, 40(1), 80−97.
Hoscheidt, S. M., Nadel, L., Payne, J., & Ryan, L. (2010). Hippocam-
pal activation during retrieval of spatial context from episodic and
semantic memory. Behavioural Brain Research, 212(2), 121−132.
Jia, X. Z., Wang, J., Sun, H. Y., Zhang, H., Liao, W., Wang, Z., Yan, C.
G., Song, X. W., & Zang, Y. F. (2019). RESTplus: An improved
toolkit for resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data
processing. Science Bulletin, 64(14), 953−954.
Jin, H., Liu, H. L., Mo, L., Fang, S. Y., Zhang, J. X., & Lin, C. D.
(2009). Involvement of the left inferior frontal gyrus in predictive
inference making. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 71(2),
142−148.
Johnson, H. M., & Seifert, C. M. (1994). Sources of the continued
influence effect: When misinformation in memory affects later in-
ferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,
and Cognition, 20(6), 1420−1436.
Jolles, D. D., Mennigen, E., Gupta, M. W., Hegarty, C. E., Bearden, C.
E., & Karlsgodt, K. H. (2020). Relationships between intrinsic
functional connectivity, cognitive control, and reading achievement
across development. NeuroImage, 221, 117202.
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., &
Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and its correction. Psychological
Science in the Public Interest, 13(3), 106−131.
Li, C. R., Huang, C., Constable, R. T., & Sinha, R. (2006). Imaging
response inhibition in a stop-signal task: Neural correlates inde-
pendent of signal monitoring and post-response processing. The
Journal of Neuroscience, 26(1), 186−192.
Li, Q., Yang, G., Li, Z., Qi, Y., Cole, M. W., & Liu, X. (2017). Conflict
detection and resolution rely on a combination of common and dis-
tinct cognitive control networks. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral
Reviews, 83, 123−131.
Masson, S., Potvin, P., Riopel, M., & Foisy, L. M. B. (2014). Differ-
ences in brain activation between novices and experts in science
during a task involving a common misconception in electricity.
Mind Brain & Education, 8(1), 44−55.
Morita, T., Asada, M., & Naito, E. (2019). Developmental changes in
task-induced brain deactivation in humans revealed by a motor task.
Developmental Neurobiology, 79(6), 536−558.
Nathaniel-James, D. A., Fletcher, P., & Frith, C. D. (1997). The func-
tional anatomy of verbal initiation and suppression using the hay-
ling test. Neuropsychologia, 35(4), 559−566.
Ragland, J. D., Turetsky, B. I., Gur, R. C., Gunning-Dixon, F., Turner,
T., Schroeder, L., Chan, R., & Gur, R. E. (2002). Working memory
for complex figures: An fMRI comparison of letter and fractal
n-back tasks. Neuropsychology, 16(3), 370−379.
Rich, P. R., & Zaragoza, M. S. (2016). The continued influence of
implied and explicitly stated misinformation in news reports. Jour-
nal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,
42(1), 62−74.
Rich, P. R., & Zaragoza, M. S. (2020). Correcting misinformation in
news stories: An investigation of correction timing and correction
durability. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition,
9(3), 310−322.
Rugg, M. D., & Curran, T. (2007). Event-related potentials and recog-
nition memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(6), 251−257.
Steuwe, C., Daniels, J. K., Frewen, P. A., Densmore, M., Theberge, J.,
& Lanius, R. A. (2015). Effect of direct eye contact in women with
PTSD related to interpersonal trauma: Psychophysiological interac-
tion analysis of connectivity of an innate alarm system. Psychiatry
Research-Neuroimaging, 232(2), 162−167.
Swire, B., Ecker, U. K. H., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). The role of
familiarity in correcting inaccurate information. Journal of Experi-
mental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition, 43(12), 1948−1961.
van Moort, M. L., Jolles, D. D., Koornneef, A., & van den Broek, P.
(2020). What you read versus what you know: Neural correlates of
accessing context information and background knowledge in con-
structing a mental representation during reading. Journal of Ex-
perimental Psychology: General, 149(11), 2084−2101.
Wahlheim, C. N., Alexander, T. R., & Peske, C. D. (2020). Reminders
of everyday misinformation statements can enhance memory for
and beliefs in corrections of those statements in the short term.
Psychological Science, 31(10), 1325−1339.
Wang, R. M., Mo, L., Jia, D. M., Leng, Y., & Li, L. (2006). Mechanism
of constructing and updating situation models in text-reading. Acta
Psychologica Sinica, 38(1), 30−40.
Wang, R. M., Mo, L., Li, L., & Jin, H. (2008). Mechanism of the coor-
dinating integration in text-reading. Acta Psychologica Sinica,
40(11), 1165−1177.
Wang, W. C., Brashier, N. M., Wing, E. A., Marsh, E. J., & Cabeza, R.
(2016). On known unknowns: Fluency and the neural mechanisms
of illusory truth. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 28(5), 739−746.
Weber, K., Christiansen, M. H., Petersson, K. M., Indefrey, P., &
Hagoort, P. (2016). fMRI syntactic and lexical repetition effects re-
veal the initial stages of learning a new language. The Journal of
Neuroscience, 36(26), 6872−6880.
Weber, K., Micheli, C., Ruigendijk, E., & Rieger, J. W. (2019). Sen-
tence processing is modulated by the current linguistic environment
and a priori information: An fMRI study. Brain and Behavior, 9(7),
e01308.
Yan, C. G., Wang, X. D., Zuo, X. N., & Zang, Y. F. (2016). Dpabi: Data
processing & analysis for (resting-state) brain imaging. Neuroin-
formatics, 14(3), 339−351.
Yang, X. H., Li, H. J., Lin, N., Zhang, X. P., Wang, Y. S., Zhang, Y.,
Zhan, Q., Zuo, X. N., & Yang, Y. F. (2019). Uncovering cortical ac-
tivations of discourse comprehension and their overlaps with com-
mon large-scale neural networks. NeuroImage, 203, 116200.
Yuan, Q. M., Ma, F. Y., Zhang, M., Chen, M., Zhang, Z. Q., Wu, J. J.,
Lu, C. M., & Guo, T. M. (2021). Neural interaction between lan-
guage control and cognitive control: Evidence from cross-task ad-
aptation. Behavioural Brain Research, 401, 113086.
 JIN Hua et al.: The neural basis of the continued influence effect of misinformation

Appendix:
Sample of fMRI experimental materials
Control condition Retraction condition
1=A new office building suddenly collapsed today
2 = Bystanders said the collapse occurred at 11: 00 in the morning 2 = Bystanders said there was a fire on the lower floor
3=The building was completed only two months ago
4 = The surrounding area has been banned from public use
5= Firefighters at the scene said there was no evidence of fire
6=The person in charge of the building has been contacted for explanation
Inference problems: 1. Fire prevention measures should be reviewed
2. The fire brigade must arrive at the scene as soon as possible
3. The fire alarm has probably been activated