As I understood the abstract, participants are given general-knowledge questions (e.g. who was the fourth U.S. president), participant looks up the answer onlin

As I understood the abstract, participants are given general-knowledge questions (e.g. who was the fourth U.S. president), participant looks up the answer online, sees "Madison" and then thinks they must have know that (Washington - Adams - Jefferson - Madison). The participant will then predict that they will do well on subsequent questions without using the internet for reference (at least that's how I interpret "... [participants] predict that they will know more in the future without the help of the internet"). That's a foible fit for satire. I'm curious whether there is a process of rationalization like I just imagined, or whether there is just a fundamental confusion by the participant about whether they knew the information prior or knew it from the recent internet search. If the later, that could be horrifying (imagine you needed to find out how long Oceania and Eastasia have been at war). I've read about teachers struggling to convince students of the need to actually memorize things despite the ubiquity of easy reference: you just won't make new connections or insights if you don't have any information already in your head. I would say this study would suggest the teacher's task is even more difficult if people misattribute recent searches for prior knowledge.