Blocked Presentation Leads Participants to Overutilize Domain Familiarity as a Cue for Judgments of Learning (JOLs).

The accuracy of judgments of learning (JOLs) is vital for efficient self-regulated learning. We examined a situation in which participants overutilize their prior knowledge of a topic ("domain familiarity") as a basis for JOLs, resulting in substantial overconfidence in topics they know the most about. College students rank ordered their knowledge across ten different domains and studied, judged, and then completed a test on facts from those domains.

The animacy advantage in memory occurs under self-paced study conditions, but participants' metacognitive beliefs can deter it.

Introduction: Animacy distinguishes living (animate) things from non-living (inanimate) things. People tend to devote attention and processing to living over nonliving things, resulting in a privileged status for animate concepts in human cognition. For example, people tend to remember more animate than inanimate items, a phenomenon known as the "animacy effect" or "animacy advantage.

Within-pair factors might explain the inconsistent effects of animacy on paired-associates recall.

The tendency for people to have better memory for animate (living) concepts than inanimate (nonliving) concepts in memory tasks involving free recall and recognition suggests that animacy status can be an important predictor of memory. To date, however, the effect of animacy on paired-associates recall has been mixed: Some studies have found an animacy advantage, some have found an animacy disadvantage, and some have found no difference by animacy. We tested the hypothesis that the within-pair relationship of the two words in a pair matters more for cued recall than animacy itself.

Animate and Inanimate Words Demonstrate Equivalent Retrieval Dynamics Despite the Occurrence of the Animacy Advantage.

People demonstrate a memory advantage for animate (living) concepts over inanimate (nonliving) concepts in a variety of memory tasks, including free recall, but we do not know the mechanism(s) that produces this effect. We compared the retrieval dynamics (serial-position effects, probability of first recall, output order, categorical clustering, and recall contiguity) of animate and inanimate words in a typical free recall task to help elucidate this effect. Participants were more likely to recall animate than inanimate words, but we found few, if any, differences in retrieval dynamics by word type.

Delayed Judgments of Learning Are Associated With Activation of Information From Past Experiences: A Neurobiological Examination.

Research in metacognition suggests that the information people use to predict their memory performance can vary depending on the contexts in which they make their predictions. For example, if people judge their memories after a delay from initial encoding, they may be more likely to use retrieved information about the past encoding experience than if they judged memories immediately after encoding. Although this seems intuitive, past behavioral and neuroimaging work has not tested whether delayed memory judgments are more strongly coupled with information about past experiences than immediate memory judgments.

Forget framing might involve the assumption of mastery, but probably does not activate the notion of forgetting.

Soliciting predictions about hypothetical memory performance (without having participants engage in a related memory task) is a simple way for researchers to examine people's metacognitive beliefs about how memory functions. Using this methodology, researchers can vary what information is provided as part of the scenario or how the memory prediction is framed to examine how such factors alter people's memory predictions. For example, Koriat, Bjork, Sheffer, and Bar (2004) found that participants would factor expected retention intervals into their memory predictions (worse performance over longer intervals) when they were asked to predict future forgetting, but not when they were asked to predict future remembering.

Rule activation and ventromedial prefrontal engagement support accurate stopping in self-paced learning.

When weighing evidence for a decision, individuals are continually faced with the choice of whether to gather more information or act on what has already been learned. The present experiment employed a self-paced category learning task and fMRI to examine the neural mechanisms underlying stopping of information search and how they contribute to choice accuracy. Participants learned to classify triads of face, object, and scene cues into one of two categories using a rule based on one of the stimulus dimensions.

The animacy advantage for free-recall performance is not attributable to greater mental arousal.

People often demonstrate better memory for animate concepts (e.g., lion and sailor) than for inanimate concepts (e.

Framing affects scale usage for judgments of learning, not confidence in memory.

Framing metacognitive judgments of learning (JOLs) in terms of the likelihood of forgetting rather than remembering consistently yields a counterintuitive outcome: The mean of participants' forget-framed JOLs is often higher (after reverse-scoring) than the mean of their remember-framed JOLs, suggesting greater confidence in memory. In the present experiments, we tested 2 competing explanations for this pattern of results. The optimistic-anchoring hypothesis suggests that forget-framed JOLs are associated with greater optimism about memory than are remember-framed JOLs, which leads to their greater magnitude.

Unskilled and unaware in the classroom: College students' desired grades predict their biased grade predictions.

People tend to be overconfident when predicting their performance on a variety of physical and mental tasks (i.e., they predict they will perform better than they actually do).

Adaptive memory: Animacy enhances free recall but impairs cued recall.

Recent research suggests that human memory systems evolved to remember animate things better than inanimate things. In the present experiments, we examined whether these effects occur for both free recall and cued recall. In Experiment 1, we directly compared the effect of animacy on free recall and cued recall.

People use the memory for past-test heuristic as an explicit cue for judgments of learning.

When people estimate their memory for to-be-learned material over multiple study-test trials, they tend to base their judgments of learning (JOLs) on their test performance for those materials on the previous trial. Their use of this information-known as the memory for past-test (MPT) heuristic-is believed to be responsible for improvements in the relative accuracy (resolution) of people's JOLs across learning trials. Although participants seem to use past-test information as a major basis for their JOLs, little is known about how learners translate this information into a judgment of learning.

Examining competing hypotheses for the effects of diagrams on recall for text.

Supplementing text-based learning materials with diagrams typically increases students' free recall and cued recall of the presented information. In the present experiments, we examined competing hypotheses for why this occurs. More specifically, although diagrams are visual, they also serve to repeat information from the text they accompany.

Domain familiarity as a cue for judgments of learning.

Students differ in how much they already know about topics within and across their courses. Few studies, however, have examined the relationship between participants' levels of knowledge across topics (i.e.

Magnitude and accuracy differences between judgements of remembering and forgetting.

Metacognition researchers have recently begun to examine the effects of framing judgements of learning (JOLs) in terms of forgetting (rather than remembering) on the judgements' magnitude and accuracy. Although a promising new direction for the study of metamemory, initial studies have yielded inconsistent results. To help resolve these inconsistencies, in four experiments we had college students (N = 434) study paired associates and make JOLs framed in terms of either remembering or forgetting over two study-test trials.

The contributions of anchoring and past-test performance to the underconfidence-with-practice effect.

In the underconfidence-with-practice effect, people's judgments of learning (JOLs) typically underestimate memory performance across multiple study-test phases. Whereas the past-test hypothesis suggests that this underconfidence stems from participants' reliance on earlier test performance to make subsequent JOLs (despite new learning), the anchoring hypothesis suggests that the underconfidence stems from participants' reliance on a fixed psychological anchor point low on the JOL scale to make their JOLs. To contrast the predictions of these hypotheses, we had college students study, make JOLs, and test over several dozen paired-associate items across two study-test phases.

Metacomprehension judgements reflect the belief that diagrams improve learning from text.

In two experiments we systematically explored whether people consider the format of text materials when judging their text learning, and whether doing so might inappropriately bias their judgements. Participants studied either text with diagrams (multimedia) or text alone and made both per-paragraph judgements and global judgements of their text learning. In Experiment 1 they judged their learning to be better for text with diagrams than for text alone.

Diagrams increase the recall of nondepicted text when understanding is also increased.

Multimedia presentations typically produce better memory and understanding than do single-medium presentations. Little research, however, has considered the effect of multimedia on memory for nonmultimedia information within a large multimedia presentation (e.g.

Do older adults show less confidence in their monitoring of learning?

Although aging has a minimal effect on the accuracy of people's judgments of learning (JOLs) at predicting future memory performance, older adults may be less confident in these memory judgments--similar to the age declines often reported with memory self-efficacy. To evaluate this possibility, the authors had younger and older adults make JOLs for paired associates and rate their confidence in the accuracy of each JOL. Age-related declines in confidence in judgments were evident for immediate JOLs but not for delayed JOLs.

Trans-iliac removal of bullet fragments from the sacroiliac joint.

The need for removal of intra-articular bullet fragments is well documented in the literature. Arthroscopy and arthrotomy are the preferred methods to access large superficial joints; however, these methods cannot be effectively used to access the sacroiliac joint. Its relationship to vital soft tissues and its convoluted joint anatomy make it almost impossible to explore even under open methods.

Does retrieval fluency contribute to the underconfidence-with-practice effect?

Judgments of learning (JOLs) made during multiple study-test trials underestimate increases in recall performance across those trials, an effect that has been dubbed the underconfidence-with-practice (UWP) effect. In 3 experiments, the authors examined the contribution of retrieval fluency to the UWP effect for immediate and delayed JOLs. The UWP effect was demonstrated with reliable underconfidence on Trial 2 occurring for both kinds of JOL.