What is the main idea of the passage?

Repetition can make a claim feel credible through familiarity, so recognition should be separated from verification. (The passage explains how repetition creates fluency, limits the effect, and recommends checking evidence rather than trusting familiarity.)

Why does forgetting a claim’s source make familiarity riskier?

A person may retain the feeling of recognition without remembering whether the source was dependable. (The text says source information may fade while familiarity remains, allowing ease to be misread as prior verification.)

What does “fluency” mean in the passage’s discussion of processing?

The ease with which the mind recognizes and processes a statement (The passage introduces fluency just after saying repeated words become easier to process and compares it with an easy path.)

Which factor does the passage say can resist the effect of repetition?

Paying attention to the claim’s source (The third paragraph names attention to sources, along with prior knowledge and obvious contradiction, as a resisting factor.)

When Familiarity Borrows Truth: Level 4 Reading Comprehension Questions

Read an unfamiliar claim once, and it may feel awkward. Encounter the same claim several times, and its words become easier to process. That ease can quietly be mistaken for evidence. Psychologists call this pattern the illusory truth effect: repetition may increase a statement’s felt credibility even when repetition adds no support.

The mechanism begins with processing fluency. A familiar sentence takes less mental work to recognize, just as a well-used path is easier to walk. The mind must then interpret that ease. If the source is forgotten, familiarity may be misread as a sign that the claim is widely known or previously verified. A neat rhyme, clear type, or simple wording can also increase fluency, though none can make a false statement true.

The effect is a tendency, not a switch controlling every judgment. Prior knowledge, attention to sources, and an obvious contradiction can all resist it. Repetition can also serve a good claim by helping people remember it, so repetition itself is not proof of deception.

A useful response is to separate recognition from verification. Ask whether a claim feels supported because evidence accompanies it, or merely because its shape is familiar. That pause turns a vague sense of truth into a question that sources can answer.

Comprehension questions