Examining the effect of list composition on monitoring and control processes in metamemory
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Examining the effect of list composition on monitoring and control processes in metamemory Skylar J. Laursen 1 & Chris M. Fiacconi 1 Accepted: 30 September 2020 # The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract According to the widely accepted cue-utilization view, judgments of learning (JOLs) are thought to be comparative in nature, such that they are sensitive to the relative differences between stimuli. Here, we report the results of three experiments that both support and extend this tenet of the cue-utilization view by examining the impact of relative differences on metacognitive control strategies, including study-time allocation and re-study selection. By presenting word pairs of medium-difficulty intermixed with either easy or difficult word pairs we manipulated list composition to assess the impact of the relative difference between items on individuals’ JOLs (Experiments 1 and 2a), study-time allocation (Experiment 1), and re-study selection (Experiments 2a and 2b). First, our manipulation of list composition demonstrated that stimuli of equal difficulty are judged to be more or less memorable depending on the context in which they are presented, thereby confirming previous findings that JOLs are sensitive to the relative differences among items. Second, with regard to metacognitive control strategies, our results indicated that list composition may not impact all control strategies in the same fashion. Specifically, the relative differences between items did not appear to influence the amount of study time allocated to a given item, but did affect which items were selected for re-study. These findings have important applied implications, and may assist in the development of more effective guidance on how to best engage in self-regulated learning. Keywords Metamemory . Metacognitive monitoring . Metacognitive control . Judgments of learning
Introduction The ability to effectively monitor and control one’s learning is an essential ingredient in academic success. While the former refers to an individual’s ability to evaluate and assess ongoing learning, the latter speaks to the ability to implement and appropriately adjust learning activities to optimize eventual performance. The link between monitoring and control strategies has been of considerable interest in the meta-memory literature (Dunlosky & Connor, 1997; Fiechter, Benjamin, & Unsworth, 2016; Finn, 2008; Kornell & Metcalfe, 2006; Metcalfe, 2009; Metcalfe & Finn, 2008; Nelson, Dunlosky, Graf, & Narens, 1994; Son & Metcalfe, 2000; Thiede & Dunlosky, 1999). This link is often studied by examining the correspondence between judgments of learning (JOLs),
* Skylar J. Laursen [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada
which are prospective metacognitive predictions of future memory performance (Rhodes, 2016; Schwartz, 1994), and two types of control strategies, namely, study-time allocation (Dunlosky & Connor, 1997; Thiede & Dunlosky, 1999) and re-study selection (Finn, 2008;
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