Year
2026
Season
Spring
Paper Type
Master's Thesis
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree Name
Master of Science in Psychological Science (MSPS)
Department
Psychological and Brain Sciences
NACO controlled Corporate Body
University of North Florida. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Committee Chairperson
Dr. Charles J. Fitzsimmons
Second Advisor
Dr. Sara D. Davis
Rights Statement
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Abstract
Adults struggle to comprehend health statistics, but visual displays like number lines or icon arrays improve adults’ comprehension. However, it is unknown whether adults are metacognitively aware of the benefit visual displays have on their understanding of health information. Metacognitive awareness is important because it may inform adult’s decisions in a healthcare setting, like choosing to wash your hands or receive a vaccine. We recruited 190 college students who solved health-related ratio comparison problems where half of the problems were accompanied by either an icon array, number line, or irrelevant display. Participants rated their confidence immediately after providing their answer to each problem. U.S. college students in the number line group were more accurate and faster when they solved problems with visual displays than not, but there were no differences in adults’ confidence on problems with displays compared to without displays, regardless of their randomly assigned display type. Adults’ metacognitive monitoring accuracy did not differ by experimental group. Our results suggest that adults may not realize the effectiveness of displays for their health risk understanding, which emphasizes the need for training these individuals to appropriately use displays that inform their risk comprehension and health decision-making.
Suggested Citation
Pruitt, Abby, "Are U.S. adults metacognitively aware of the benefits visual displays have on risk comprehension? Testing the role of visual displays on adults' confidence during health risk comparison" (2026). UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 1409.
https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/1409
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