Probing the effect of perceptual (dis)fluency on metacognitive judgments.

Despite research showing that perceptually fluent stimuli (i.e., stimuli that are easier to process) are given higher judgment of learning (JOL) ratings than perceptually disfluent stimuli, it remains unknown whether the influence of perceptual fluency on JOLs is driven by the fluent or disfluent items. Moreover, it is unclear whether this difference hinges on relative differences in fluency. The current study addressed these unanswered questions by employing (Fiacconi et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 46:926-944, 2020), Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46[5], 926-944) letter set priming procedure. In this procedure, participants are first exposed to words containing only a subset of letters. Following this exposure, JOLs to new words composed of the same letters (i.e., fluent), and new words composed of nonexposed letters (i.e., disfluent) are compared with isolate the contribution of perceptual fluency. Because this procedure does not rely on parametric variations in perceptual features, we can directly assess the potential benefit and/or cost of fluent and disfluent items, respectively, by including neutral baseline conditions. Moreover, implementing both a mixed- and pure-list design allowed us to assess the comparative nature of perceptual fluency on JOLs. Counter to previous assumptions, our results are the first to demonstrate that perceptual disfluency decreases JOLs. Moreover, we found that the influence of perceptual disfluency on JOLs hinges on the relative differences in fluency between items even in the absence of a belief about the mnemonic impact of the fluency manipulation. These findings have important implications as they provide evidence that the difficulty, rather than ease, of information form the basis of individuals metacognitive judgments.

On the cost and benefits of restudying: exploring the list strength effect in self-guided learning.

Across five experiments we examined whether restudying a self-selected subset of items impairs memory for the remaining non-restudied items, and enhances memory for the restudied items. This question was inspired by research on the list strength effect, in which re-presentation of only a subset of items from a list impairs recall for items presented only once, and enhances memory for items presented twice. We found that following initial encoding of all items, honouring participants' restudy selections did indeed impair recall for the non-restudied items relative to when no items were restudied. Additionally, we found that memory for the subset of restudied items was enhanced relative to when all items were restudied. These findings expand previous research on the LSE to self-regulated learning and provide important new insights on how some learning strategies may in part be detrimental, but also beneficial, to future memory performance.

Examining the effect of expected test format and test difficulty on the frequency and mnemonic costs of mind wandering.

Mind wandering, generally defined as task-unrelated thought, has been shown to constitute between 30% and 50% of individuals' thoughts during almost every activity in which they are engaged. Critically, however, previous research has shown that the demands of a given task can lead to either the up- or down-regulation of mind wandering and that engagement in mind wandering may be differentially detrimental to future memory performance depending on learning conditions. The goal of the current research was to gain a better understanding of how the circumstances surrounding a learning episode affect the frequency with which individuals engage in off-task thought, and the extent to which these differences differentially affect memory performance across different test formats. Specifically, while prior work has manipulated the conditions of encoding, we focused on the anticipated characteristics of the retrieval task, thereby examining whether the anticipation of later demands imposed by the expected test format/difficulty would influence the frequency or performance costs of mind wandering during encoding. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that the anticipation of future test demands, as modelled by expected test format/difficulty, does not affect rates of mind wandering. However, the costs associated with mind wandering do appear to scale with the difficulty of the test. These findings provide important new insights into the impact of off-task thought on future memory performance and constrain our understanding of the strategic regulation of inattention in the context of learning and memory.

Examining the effect of list composition on monitoring and control processes in metamemory.

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.

Isolating the contribution of perceptual fluency to judgments of learning (JOLs): Evidence for reactivity in measuring the influence of fluency.

Judgments of learning (JOLs) refer to explicit predictions regarding the likelihood of remembering newly acquired information on a later test of memory. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in understanding the processes that underlie such judgments. Recent theorizing on this matter has characterized JOLs as inferential in nature-that is, they are derived from the implicit utilization of a variety of different cues of which only some are diagnostic of future memory performance. The present series of experiments examine the potential role for one such cue, namely, perceptual fluency (i.e., the subjective ease of perceiving a stimulus) in guiding JOLs. Using a novel methodological approach adapted from Masson (1986), we demonstrate across 6 experiments that perceptual fluency per se can indeed inform predictions of future memory performance, but that its influence depends on the specific task requirements at the time JOLs are solicited. We discuss these results in relation to experience- versus theory-based contributions to metamemory judgments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).