Comprehension as a basis for metacognitive judgments: Effects of effort after meaning on recall and metacognition.

We examined free recall and metacognitive judgments of ambiguous sentences studied with and without clues to facilitate their comprehension. Sentences were either studied without clues, with clues meaningfully embedded, or with clues following a 10-s interval delay. After presentation, subjects made judgments of comprehension (JCOMPs) or judgments of learning (JOLs). Puzzling over the meaning of sentences for several seconds prior to receiving the clue enhanced recall compared with studying sentences without clues or with embedded clues. This benefit of effort after meaning was not reflected in JCOMPs or JOLs. Rather, sentences considered relatively easy to understand received higher JOLs regardless of experimental condition. Although effort after meaning enhanced recall, subjects displayed no awareness of this benefit in their judgments. Our study adds to a growing literature showing students’ ignorance of factors affecting their own learning, which have important implications for education. Making learning conditions more difficult, thus requiring students to engage more cognitive effort, often leads to enhanced retention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of delaying judgments of learning on metacognitive accuracy: A meta-analytic review.

Many studies have examined the accuracy of predictions of future memory performance solicited through judgments of learning (JOLs). Among the most robust findings in this literature is that delaying predictions serves to substantially increase the relative accuracy of JOLs compared with soliciting JOLs immediately after study, a finding termed the delayed JOL effect. The meta-analyses reported in the current study examined the predominant theoretical accounts as well as potential moderators of the delayed JOL effect. The first meta-analysis examined the relative accuracy of delayed compared with immediate JOLs across 4,554 participants (112 effect sizes) through gamma correlations between JOLs and memory accuracy. Those data showed that delaying JOLs leads to robust benefits to relative accuracy (g = 0.93). The second meta-analysis examined memory performance for delayed compared with immediate JOLs across 3,807 participants (98 effect sizes). Those data showed that delayed JOLs result in a modest but reliable benefit for memory performance relative to immediate JOLs (g = 0.08). Findings from these meta-analyses are well accommodated by theories suggesting that delayed JOL accuracy reflects access to more diagnostic information from long-term memory rather than being a by-product of a retrieval opportunity. However, these data also suggest that theories proposing that the delayed JOL effect results from a memorial benefit or the match between the cues available for JOLs and those available at test may also provide viable explanatory mechanisms necessary for a comprehensive account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forgetting our facts: The role of inhibitory processes in the loss of propositional knowledge.

Seven experiments are reported that show that retrieving facts from long-term memory is accomplished, in part, by inhibitory processes that suppress interfering facts. When asked to repeatedly retrieve a recently learned proposition (e.g., recalling The actor is looking at the tulip, given cues such as Actor looking t__), subjects experienced a recall deficit for related facts (e.g., The actor is looking at the violin) on a recall test administered 15 min later. Importantly, this retrieval-induced forgetting was shown to generalize to other facts in which the inhibited concepts took part (e.g., The teacher is lifting the violin), replicating a finding observed by M. C. Anderson and B. A. Spellman (1995) with categorical stimuli. These findings suggest a critical role for suppression in models of propositional retrieval and implicate the mere retrieval of what we know as a source of forgetting of factual knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and recollection in the accuracy of judgments of learning.

Dual-process theories propose that episodic memory performance reflects both recollection of prior details as well as more automatic influences of the past. The authors explored the idea that recollection mediates the accuracy of judgments of learning (JOLs) and may also help explain age differences in JOL accuracy. Young and older adults made immediate JOLs at study and then completed recognition or recall tests that included a recollect/familiar judgment. JOLs were found to be strongly related to recollected items but not to items remembered on the basis of familiarity. The pattern was weaker in older adults, consistent with age-related declines in recollection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metamemory judgments and the benefits of repeated study: Improving recall predictions through the activation of appropriate knowledge.

Correspondence between judgments of learning (JOLs) and actual recall tends to be poor when the same items are studied and recalled multiple times (e.g., A. Koriat, L. Sheffer, & H. Ma’ayan, 2002). The authors investigated whether making relevant metamemory knowledge more salient would improve the association between actual and predicted recall as a function of repeated exposure to the same study list. In 2 experiments, participants completed 4 study–recall phases involving the same list of items. In addition to having participants make item-by-item JOLs during each study phase, after the 1st study–recall phase participants also generated change-in-recall estimates as to how many more or fewer words they would recall given another exposure to the same study list. This estimation procedure was designed to highlight repeated study as a factor that can contribute to recall performance. Activating metamemory knowledge about the benefits of repeated study for recall in this way allowed participants to accurately express this knowledge in a free-recall context (Experiment 2), but less so when the memory test was cued recall (Experiment 1). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"The nature of self-referent encoding: The contributions of elaborative and organizational processes": Correction to Klein and Loftus.

Reports an error in "The nature of self-referent encoding: The contributions of elaborative and organizational processes" by Stanley B. Klein and Judith Loftus (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1988[Jul], Vol 55[1], 5-11). The word case should have been deleted from the first sentence of the left-hand column of page 9. The sentence should read, "Here, self-reference produced recall almost identical to that found for the definition task." (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1988-28556-001.) A number of investigators have demonstrated that relating information to the self (self-referent encoding) produces better recall than structural or semantic encoding of the same material. The mechanisms responsible for this self-referent recall advantage, however, still are not well understood. Some have proposed an elaborative processing explanation (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), whereas others have argued for an organizational processing interpretation (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986). We present a paradigm for clarifying the respective contributions of these two processes to the recall of material encoded self-referentially. Our findings suggest that both elaborative and organizational processes are involved, but which process plays the larger role in recall depends on the material being judged. We discuss the implications of a dual-processing explanation of self-referent encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory predictions are influenced by perceptual information: Evidence for metacognitive illusions.

Although perceptual information is utilized to judge size or depth, little work has investigated whether such information is used to make memory predictions. The present study examined how the font size of to-be-remembered words influences predicted memory performance. Participants studied words for a free-recall test that varied in font size and made judgments of learning (JOLs) for each item. JOLs were influenced by font size, as larger font sizes were given higher JOLs, whereas little relationship was evident between font size and recall. The effect was modified when other, more valid, sources of information (e.g., associative strength) were available when JOLs were made and persisted despite experience with multiple study-test sessions, use of a forgetting scale to assess predictions, and explicit warning of participants that font size has little effect on memory performance. When ease of reading was manipulated, such that large font size words were made less fluent, the effect was eliminated. Thus, highly accessible perceptual cues can strongly influence JOLs, likely via encoding fluency, and this effect can lead to metacognitive illusions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Illusions of competence for phonetically, orthographically, and semantically similar word pairs.

Illusions of competence are thought to arise when judgements of learning (JOLs) made in the presence of intact cue-target pairs during study create a “foresight bias,” such that JOLs are inflated by the apparent association between a cue and a target, despite the lack of benefit this association has for recall performance. For example, Castel, McCabe, and Roediger (2007) recently demonstrated an illusion of competence for identical word pairs (mouse—mouse). In two experiments, the authors examined possible sources for this overconfidence, including phonetic, semantic, and orthographic similarity. An illusion of competence was found for homophones, synonyms, orthographically similar, and unrelated items, whereas no illusion of competence was found for word pairs with a relatively high forward-semantic association. Self-paced study times indicated that encoding fluency was not closely associated with the magnitude of overconfidence. Error data revealed participants may have been engaging in strategic responding in order to maximise correct recall. Our results underscore the importance of considering factors that influence both JOLs and recall performance when considering sources of (mis)calibration in absolute accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forgetting the once-seen face: Estimating the strength of an eyewitness's memory representation.

The fidelity of an eyewitness's memory representation is an issue of paramount forensic concern. Psychological science has been unable to offer more than vague generalities concerning the relation of retention interval to memory trace strength for the once-seen face. A meta-analysis of 53 facial memory studies produced a highly reliable association (r=.18, d=0.37) between longer retention intervals and positive forgetting of once-seen faces, an effect equally strong for both face recognition and eyewitness identification studies. W. A. Wickelgren's (1974, 1975, 1977) theory of recognition memory provided statistically satisfactory fits to 11 different empirical forgetting functions. Applied to the results of field studies of eyewitness memory, the theory yields predictions relevant to fact finders' evaluations of eyewitness credibility. A plausible upper limit for witness initial memory strength corresponds to a probability of .67 of being correct on a fair six-person lineup. Furthermore, not only can the percentage of remaining memory strength be determined for any retention interval, but this strength estimate can be translated into an estimated probability of being correct on a fair lineup of a specified size. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recollection-based prospective metamemory judgments are more accurate than those based on confidence: Judgments of remembering and knowing (JORKS).

Five experiments were conducted to examine whether the nature of the information that is monitored during prospective metamemory judgments affected the relative accuracy of those judgments. We compared item-by-item judgments of learning (JOLs), which involved participants determining how confident they were that they would remember studied items, with judgments of remembering and knowing (JORKs), which involved participants determining whether studied items would later be accompanied by contextual details (i.e., remembering) or would not (i.e., knowing). JORKs were more accurate than JOLs when remember–know or confidence judgments were made at test and when cued recall was the outcome measure, but not for yes–no recognition. We conclude that the accuracy of metamemory judgments depends on the nature of the information monitored during study and test and that metamemory monitoring can be improved if participants are asked to base their judgments on contextual details rather than on confidence. These data support the contention that metamemory decisions can be based on qualitatively distinct cues, rather than an overall memory strength signal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributing study effort to data-driven and goal-driven effects: Implications for metacognitive judgments.

In self-paced learning, when the regulation of effort is goal driven (e.g., allocated to different items according to their relative importance), judgments of learning (JOLs) increase with study time. When it is data driven (i.e., determined by the ease of committing the item to memory), JOLs decrease with study time (Koriat, Ma’ayan, & Nussinson, 2006). Because the amount of effort invested in different items is conjointly determined by data-driven and goal-driven regulation, an attribution process must be postulated in which variations in effort are attributed by the learner to data-driven or goal-driven regulation before the implications for metacognitive judgments are determined. To support the reality of this process, the authors asked learners to adopt a facial expression that creates a feeling of effort and induced them to attribute that effort either to data-driven or to goal-driven regulation. This manipulation was found to determine the direction in which experienced effort affected metacognitive judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The interplay between value and relatedness as bases for metacognitive monitoring and control: Evidence for agenda-based monitoring.

Two experiments are reported examining how value and relatedness interact to influence metacognitive monitoring and control processes. Participants studied unrelated and related word pairs, each accompanied by point values denoting how important the items were to remember. These values were presented either before or after each pair in a between-subjects design, and participants made item-by-item judgments of learning (JOLs) predicting the likelihood that each item would be remembered later. Results from Experiment 1 showed that participants used value and relatedness as cues to inform their JOLs. Interestingly, JOLs increased as a function of value even in the after condition in which value had no impact on cued recall. Participants in Experiment 2 were permitted to control study time for each item. Results showed that value and relatedness were simultaneously considered when allocating study time. These results support a cue-weighting process in which JOLs and study time allocation are based on multiple cues, which may or may not be predictive of future memory performance, and complements the agenda-based regulation model of study time (Ariel, Dunlosky, & Bailey, 2009) by providing evidence for agenda-based monitoring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive Processes in Stereotype Formation: The Role of Correct Contingency Learning for Biased Group Judgments.

Three studies investigated contingency learning and stereotype formation in a scenario about group membership and behavior with a confounding context factor. The studies tested predictions from theoretical accounts of biased group judgments in terms of simplistic reasoning, parallel distributed memory, and pseudocontingencies. Study 1 revealed a positive correlation between erroneous stereotype formation and learning of the true contingencies with the confounding factor. Study 2 showed that a focus manipulation during encoding moderated the correlation between stereotype formation and contingency learning but not the strength of the erroneous stereotype. Study 3 used a quasiexperimental comparison between participants with biased versus unbiased group judgments and extended the findings of a positive relation between stereotype formation and contingency learning. The results support an explanation of biased group judgments by pseudocontingencies; that is, unwarranted inferences from accurately perceived bivariate correlations in complex environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mending metacognitive illusions: A comparison of mnemonic-based and theory-based procedures.

Previous research indicated that learners experience an illusion of competence during learning (termed foresight bias) because judgments of learning (JOLs) are made in the presence of information that will be absent at test. The authors examined the following 2 procedures for alleviating foresight bias: enhancing learners' sensitivity to mnemonic cues pertaining to ease of retrieval and inducing learners to resort to theory-based judgments as a basis for JOLs. Both procedures proved effective in mending metacognitive illusions--as reflected in JOLs and self-regulation of study time--but only theory-based debiasing yielded transfer to new items. The results support the notion that improved metacognition is 1 key to optimizing transfer but also that educating subjective experience does not guarantee generalization to new situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in the monitoring of learning: Cross-sectional evidence of spared resolution across the adult life span.

Researchers of metacognitive development in adulthood have exclusively used extreme-age-groups designs. We used a full cross-sectional sample (N = 285, age range: 18–80) to evaluate how associative relatedness and encoding strategies influence judgments of learning (JOLs) in adulthood. Participants studied related and unrelated word pairs and made JOLs. After a cued-recall test, retrospective item strategy reports were collected. Results revealed developmental patterns not available from previous studies (e.g., a linear age-related increase in aggregate JOL resolution across the life span). They also demonstrated the value of investigating multiple cues' influences on JOLs. Multilevel regression models showed that both relatedness and effective strategy use positively and independently influenced JOLs. Furthermore, effective strategy use was responsible for higher resolution of JOLs for unrelated items (relative to related items). The effects of relatedness and strategy use with JOLs did not interact with age. The monitoring of learning is spared by adult development despite age differences in learning itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forgetting and learning potentiation: Dual consequences of between-session delays in cognitive skill learning.

In the cognitive skill literature, between-session delays have been treated either as having a negligible effect on performance or as causing forgetting. In contrast, in the procedural skill literature, overnight between-session delays can result in performance gains. In 5 multi-session data sets, the author demonstrates that neither of these 2 models holds for the case of cognitive skill learning. Instead, the delay between sessions appeared to yield both forgetting and enhanced potential for new learning. Two candidate classes of explanation are considered, and implications for the empirical law of learning are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effects of Word Frequency and Similarity on Recognition Judgments: The Role of Recollection.

K. J. Malmberg, J. Holden, and R. M. Shiffrin (2004) reported more false alarms for low- than high-frequency words when the foils were similar to the targets. According to the source of activation confusion (SAC) model of memory, that pattern is based on recollection of an underspecified episodic trace rather than the error-prone familiarity process. The authors tested the SAC account by varying whether participants were warned about the nature of similar foils and whether the recognition test required the discrimination. More false alarms for low-frequency similar items occurred only when participants were not warned at study about the subtle features to be discriminated later. The differential false-alarm rate by word frequency corresponded to the pattern of remember responses obtained when the test instructions did not ask for a subtle discrimination, supporting the SAC account that reversed false-alarm rates to similar foils are based on the recollection process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Part-list cuing can be transient and lasting: The role of encoding.

The presentation of a subset of learned items as retrieval cues can have detrimental effects on recall of the remaining items. For 2 types of encoding conditions, the authors examined in 3 experiments whether such part-list cuing is a transient or a lasting phenomenon. Across the experiments, the detrimental effect of part-list cues was consistently found to be transient with a high degree of interitem associations and lasting with a low degree. These results indicate that the persistence of part-list cuing depends on encoding, thus challenging both strategy disruption and retrieval inhibition as general accounts of part-list cuing. A 2-mechanism account is provided according to which the 2 mechanisms mediate the effect in different encoding conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judgments of learning reflect encoding fluency: Conclusive evidence for the ease-of-processing hypothesis.

According to the ease-of-processing hypothesis, judgments of learning (JOLs) rely on the ease with which items are committed to memory during encoding—that is, encoding fluency. Conclusive evidence for this hypothesis does not yet exist because encoding fluency and item difficulty have been confounded in all previous studies. To disentangle the effects of encoding fluency and item difficulty on JOLs, we used a variant of the learner–observer–judge method in which participants observed the study phase of another participant and indicated his or her JOLs. At the same time, the to-be-studied word pairs were concealed by strings of symbols. Our experiment revealed that participants use self-paced study time as a cue for JOLs when they themselves have studied and recalled word pairs before. This metacognitive monitoring of study time provides strong support for the ease-of-processing hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Role of Temporal Shifts in Turnover Processes: It's About Time.

To better understand the process of organizational withdrawal, a turnover model incorporating dynamic predictors measured at 5 distinct points in time was examined by following a large occupationally and organizationally diverse sample over a 2-year period. Results demonstrated that turnover can be predicted by perceived costs of turnover, organizational commitment, and critical events measured soon after entry into the organization. Occupational unemployment rates, job satisfaction, and search for alternative jobs also become significant predictors when measured over time. Critical events predicted turnover in a manner distinct from the operation of attitudes, consistent with the unfolding model (Lee & Mitchell, 1994). The path to turnover was marked by consistently low perceived costs of turnover and satisfaction, decreases in commitment, and increases in job search over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)