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Students rely on their notes to memorise and learn critical course content, and recent studies of note-taking state that most students take notes, citing a survey published in 1974. Over the past four decades, classrooms and note-taking technologies have evolved: students can take notes on electronic devices, and some classes are entirely online. Despite these changes, few studies have investigated their impact on note-taking habits. Given that note-taking is critical for student learning, the purpose of the present study was to update the literature on students' general note-taking behaviour and investigate the impact of these newer technological advances on note-taking. We surveyed 577 college students, using questions from prior surveys and new questions relevant to technology. As per prior studies, students still reported taking notes in classrooms, and as important, students reported flexibility in their note-taking by (a) using a notebook or a laptop depending on course demands and (b) often deciding not to take notes in online courses. Thus, students are flexible in their note-taking behaviour, but may not always make the best decisions about how and when to take notes.

Judgments of learning (JOLs) are higher for identical pairs (dog-dog) than for related pairs (dog-cat). This identical effect may be mediated (a) by processing fluency (i.e., identical pairs are processed faster than related pairs) or (b) by a belief that identical pairs are better remembered or (c) by both factors. In the present work, we assessed the contribution of both factors. We evaluated whether a measure of processing fluency (i.e., self-paced study) mediated the relationship between pair type and JOLs (Experiment 1) and attempted to disrupt processing fluency using an AlTeRnAtInG presentation format (Experiment 2). We also evaluated whether judgments made in the absence of processing fluency demonstrated the identical effect (Experiment 3), and, finally, we had participants read a vignette about an experiment that included both pair types and estimate which pairs would be best remembered (Experiment 4). Evidence from all experiments converged on the conclusion that people's beliefs about how variables affect memory--and not differential fluency--best explain the identical effect, although we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that fluency plays a small role. The outcomes were consistent with the analytic-processing theory of JOLs--namely, when instructed to make JOLs, people adopt an analytic problem-solving approach that involves identifying variation across pairs that plausibly relate to memory and then use this variation to make JOLs.

The positive effect of delayed retrieval practice on subsequent test performance is robust; by contrast, making delayed judgments of learning (JOLs) encourages covert retrieval but has a minor influence on final test performance. In three experiments, we experimentally established and explored this memory-metamemory paradox. After initial study of paired associates (e.g., husky - ram), participants either were explicitly tested (husky - ?) or made a JOL. In Experiment 1, we adopted the standard JOL method, using a short retention interval, whereas in Experiments 2 and 3, we used a common testing-effect method involving a longer retention interval. Delayed JOLs did not boost test performance, but explicit delayed tests boosted memory after a longer retention interval. As important, participants spent less time to make JOLs than to retrieve responses. These data indicate that differences in the dynamics of retrieval for practice tests versus delayed JOLs are responsible for the paradox.

We investigated the benefits of strategy-adaptation training for promoting transfer effects. This learner-oriented approach--which directly encourages the learner to generalize strategic behavior to new tasks--helps older adults appraise new tasks and adapt trained strategies to them. In Experiment 1, older adults in a strategy-adaptation training group used 2 strategies (imagery and sentence generation) while practicing 2 tasks (list and associative learning); they were then instructed on how to do a simple task analysis to help them adapt the trained strategies for 2 different unpracticed tasks (place learning and text learning) that were discussed during training. Two additional criterion tasks (name-face associative learning and grocery-list learning) were never mentioned during training. Two other groups were included: A strategy training group (who received strategy training and transfer instructions but not strategy-adaptation training) and a waiting-list control group. Both training procedures enhanced older adults' performance on the trained tasks and those tasks that were discussed during training, but transfer was greatest after strategy-adaptation training. Experiment 2 found that strategy-adaptation training conducted via a manual that older adults used at home also promoted transfer. These findings demonstrate the importance of adopting a learner-oriented approach to promote transfer of strategy training., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.)

Unlabelled: ADHD in adulthood is associated with chronic academic impairments and problems with strategic memory encoding on standardized memory assessments, but little is known about self-regulated learning that might guide intervention., Objective: Examine the contribution of metamemory judgment accuracy and use of learning strategies to self-regulated learning in adults with ADHD, focusing on the use of self-testing., Method: A total of 34 adults with ADHD and 34 matched controls predicted their memory performance and regulated their learning of paired associates., Results: Adults with ADHD were as accurate as controls at predicting memory performance, despite remembering fewer words. By observation and self-report, they were less likely to use self-testing to learn the pairs., Conclusion: Across groups, self-testing was associated with significantly better recall and largely accounted for differences between diagnostic groups. Adults with ADHD often failed to employ a strategy that was associated with improved memory, identifying an intervention target that may improve self-regulated learning.

Background and Aims: Many studies have focused on memory training in aging, showing that older adults can improve their performance. Unfortunately, the benefits of training can rarely be generalized to other tasks for which adults were not specifically trained. We investigated the benefits of instruction-based training in promoting transfer effects in older adults., Methods: In Experiment 1, we evaluated transfer effects in a training group who practiced using standard mnemonics to learn paired associates and word lists, and this group was given instructions about how the mnemonics could be used for two of the four transfer tasks (text learning, name-face learning, grocery list learning, place learning). In Experiment 2, we compared transfer effects for two different training groups: one practiced the strategies with the two trained tasks and did not receive instructions, and the other had the same practice but also received instructions on all the transfer tasks., Results: Transfer in text learning occurred in both experiments. This transfer is particularly interesting, as text learning was the most dissimilar task in terms of both the nature of the materials and the underlying processes that support performance. The transfer was reliably greater when training involved instructions about applicability than when it did not., Conclusions: Instructions to use practiced strategies on new materials may be a useful technique in promoting transfer in older adults. It seems that the lack of transfer does not necessarily arise from older adults' inabilities, but because they do not realize that trained strategies can (or should) be applied to new materials.

Source memory involves recognizing or recalling particular features that cause us to think of a mental experience as representing a particular past event. Research directed at understanding source memory comes from many domains, including cognitive-behavioral psychology, neuroscience, lifespan psychology, clinical psychology, and psychiatry. The authors believe that integrating multiple approaches to investigating source memory--most notably here, cognitive-behavioral and cognitive neuroscience--provides productive cross-fertilization of theory, methods, and analyses that in turn will yield unique constraints to our understanding of human memory. The investigations in this special section demonstrate the promise of such an integrative approach for advancing theories of source memory., ((c) 2008 APA)

Research on skilled memory has focused on organizational processes to the exclusion of item-specific processes, although theories of skilled memory do acknowledge the importance of both kinds of processes. Using the isolation methodology, we presented lists of American football team names to participants who had either a high or a low level of knowledge about American football. An isolation effect (greater recall of the target in the isolate list than in a homogeneous control list) was observed only with high-knowledge participants. When standard lists were used, an isolation effect was observed with both groups. These findings empirically validate the importance of both organizational and item-specific processing as the basis of distinctive processing underlying skilled memory performance.

The shift-to-easier-materials (STEM) effect occurs when individuals adopt a low performance goal and subsequently select to restudy more easier items of a list than the difficult ones. The causes and constraints of the STEM effect were investigated across four experiments in which participants first briefly studied and judged their learning of 30 paired associates. They were then instructed to obtain a low performance goal and were asked to select items for restudy. The STEM effect was present when items were presented for selection simultaneously, but when items were presented for selection sequentially, the participants instead selected the more difficult items. The presence and absence of STEM effects were linked to planning that was triggered by the simultaneous format and to difficulties in executing an appropriate plan under the sequential format, respectively. Moreover, the STEM effect was evident for individuals with high memory spans but not for those with low memory spans. These and other findings highlight the contribution of planning and capacity constraints to the control of study time.

A revised methodology is described for research on metacognitive monitoring, especially judgments of learning (JOLs), to investigate psychological processing that previously has been only hypothetical and unobservable. During data collection a new stage of recall occurs just prior to the JOL, so that during data analysis the items can be partitioned into subcategories to measure the degree of JOL accuracy in ways that are more analytic than was previously possible. A weighted-average combinatorial rule allows the component measures of JOL accuracy to be combined into the usual overall measure of metacognitive accuracy. An example using the revised methodology offers a new explanation for the delayed-JOL effect, in which delayed JOLs are more accurate than immediate JOLs for predicting recall., ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)

We investigated a memory-enhancement program that involved teaching older adults to regulate study through self-testing. A regulation group was taught standard strategies along with self-testing techniques for identifying less well-learned items that could benefit from extra study. This group was compared with a strategy-control group, which was taught only strategies, and with a waiting-list control group. Greater training gains were shown for the regulation group (effect size, d = 0.72) than for the strategy-control (d = 0.28) and waiting-list control (d = 0.03) groups, indicating that training a monitoring skill--self-testing--can improve older adults' learning.

We investigated students' knowledge and beliefs about the impact of using three-dimensional (3D) multimedia presentations. Students listened to a lecture about the ventricular system, which was presented alone (Experiment 1 only) or with a 3D or a 2D video illustrating the system. Afterwards, students judged how well they would perform on a criterion test. In Experiment 1, students judged that the 3D presentation would be superior to listening to the lecture alone (d = 0.81). Mean judgments were higher for the 3D than 2D presentation (d = 0.24), but this difference was not significant, so we estimated the effect size again. In Experiment 2, judgments were significantly higher after the 3D than 2D presentations (d = 0.40). Test performance was not significantly greater after the 3D than 2D presentations. A survey study again revealed that students believe 3D presentations are superior, and most students reported preferring them to 2D presentations.

Students often are overconfident when they predict their performance on classroom examinations, and their accuracy often does not improve across exams. One contributor to overconfidence may be that students did not have enough experience, and another is that students may under-use their knowledge of prior exam performance to predict performance on their upcoming exams. To evaluate the former, we examined student prediction accuracy across 13 exams in an introductory course on educational psychology. For the latter, we computed measures that estimate the extent to which students "use" the prior exam score when predicting performance and whether students "should" use the prior exam scores. Several outcomes are noteworthy. First, students were overconfident, and contrary to expectations, this overconfidence did not decline across exams. Second, students' prior exam scores were not related to subsequent predictions, even though prior exam performance showed little bias with respect to predicting future performance. Thus, students appear to under-use prior performance despite its utility for improving prediction accuracy about future exam performance.

The target articles explore a common hypothesis pertaining to whether perceptually degrading materials will improve reasoning, memory, and metamemory. Outcomes are mixed, yet some evidence was garnered in support of a version of the disfluency hypothesis that includes moderators, and along with evidence from prior research, researchers will likely continue to explore the impact of disfluency on reasoning and learning. Toward this end, evidence and discussion from the target articles also suggest recommendations--both explicitly and implicitly--about how to explore this effect: (a) treat disfluency as a hypothesis to be tested and evaluate the disfluency hypothesis against alternatives; (b) pursue multiple replications of any disfluency effects; (c) attempt to measure differences in processing fluency across conditions; and (d) resist labeling manipulated variables with theoretically-laden terms. We expand on these recommendations in the present commentary.

We instructed the use of mediators to encode paired-associate items, and then measured both cued recall of targets and mediators. Older adults (n = 49) and younger adults (n = 57) studied a mixed list of concrete and abstract noun pairs under instructions to either generate a sentence or an image to form a new association between normatively unrelated words. After each item was studied, they reported the mediator, if any, they had generated. After standard cued recall for each item, they were asked to recall their mediator. Large age differences (d = 1.52) occurred in mediator retrieval during a cued recall test. Older adults were less likely to retrieve mediators, and when they did, their retrieved mediators were more often gist-consistent than verbatim retrievals. Older adults were also more likely to report the wrong target word when correctly retrieving the mediator. Age differences in these decoding errors were large statistical effects, especially for abstract items (d = 1.41) relative to concrete items (d = 0.54). Older adults' associative memory deficits have more to do with retrieval mechanisms than with inadequate encoding strategies. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 2 footnotes.)

The function of accurately monitoring one's own learning is to support effective control of study that enhances learning. Although this link between monitoring accuracy and learning is intuitively plausible and is assumed by general theories of self-regulated learning, it has not received a great deal of empirical scrutiny and no study to date has examined the link between monitoring accuracy and longer-term retention. Across two studies, college students paced their study of key-term definitions (e.g., "Proactive interference: Information already stored in memory interferes with the learning of new information"). After all definitions were studied, participants completed practice cued recall tests (e.g., "What is proactive interference?") in which they attempted to type the correct definition for each term. After each test trial, participants judged how much of their response was correct. These study-test-judgment trials continued until a definition was judged as correct three times. A final cued recall test occurred two days later. In Study 1, judgment accuracy was manipulated experimentally, and in Study 2, individual differences in accuracy were examined. In both studies, greater accuracy was associated with higher levels of retention, and this link could not be explained by differential feedback, effort during study, or trials to criterion. Results indicate that many students could benefit from interventions aimed at improving their skill at judging their learning. (Contains 3 figures.)

In this study the authors investigated whether children demonstrated the "underconfidence-with-practice" (UWP) effect. This effect is a highly robust metacognitive illusion in which adults become underconfident in their memory performance when asked to predict their memory for the same items across multiple study-test trials. One explanation for such underconfidence is the result of adults basing their predictions of future performance on how well they performed on the immediately previous trial and not adjusting their predictions upward for new learning. By contrast, previous research has demonstrated that young children's predictions are influenced minimally by their past performance. Thus, if using this memory-for-past-test heuristic is a major contributor to the UWP effect, young children may not demonstrate it. In two experiments, children were asked to predict their recall of the same pictures across multiple trials. In Experiments 1A and 1B, kindergarteners did not become underconfident with practice, whereas third graders did. In Experiment 2, first-graders did not exhibit the UWP effect even with an additional two trials. Correlational analyses suggested that memory for past test influences 3rd graders' predictions but did not consistently influence younger children's predictions. These findings implicate the role of the memory-for-past-test heuristic in the UWP effect and suggest that this metamemory illusion arises with maturation or schooling experiences. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

The literature on testing effects is vast but supports surprisingly few prescriptive conclusions for how to schedule practice to achieve both durable and efficient learning. Key limitations are that few studies have examined the effects of initial learning criterion or the effects of relearning, and no prior research has examined the combined effects of these 2 factors. Across 3 experiments, 533 students learned conceptual material via retrieval practice with restudy. Items were practiced until they were correctly recalled from 1 to 4 times during an initial learning session and were then practiced again to 1 correct recall in 1-5 subsequent relearning sessions (across experiments, more than 100,000 short-answer recall responses were collected and hand-scored). Durability was measured by cued recall and rate of relearning 1-4 months after practice, and efficiency was measured by total practice trials across sessions. A consistent qualitative pattern emerged: The effects of initial learning criterion and relearning were subadditive, such that the effects of initial learning criterion were strong prior to relearning but then diminished as relearning increased. Relearning had pronounced effects on long-term retention with a relatively minimal cost in terms of additional practice trials. On the basis of the overall patterns of durability and efficiency, our prescriptive conclusion for students is to practice recalling concepts to an initial criterion of 3 correct recalls and then to relearn them 3 times at widely spaced intervals. (Contains 14 figures, 4 tables and 4 footnotes.)

Theories of self-regulated study assume that learners monitor item difficulty when making decisions about which items to select for study. To complement such theories, the authors propose an agenda-based regulation (ABR) model in which learners' study decisions are guided by an agenda that learners develop to prioritize items for study, given their goals and task constraints. Across 4 experiments, the authors orthogonally manipulated 1 task constraint--the reward structure of the task--with objective item difficulty, so that learners could use either item difficulty or potential reward in deciding how to allocate their study time. Learners studied items, were tested, and then selected half the items for restudy. As predicted by the ABR model, reward structure drove item selection more than did item difficulty, which demonstrates learners' agendas can override the effects of monitoring item difficulty in the allocation of study time. (Contains 4 tables and 5 figures.)

Objective: Prior research suggests that individuals with ADHD overestimate their performance across domains despite performing more poorly in these domains. The authors introduce measures of accuracy from the larger realm of judgment and decision making--namely, relative accuracy and calibration--to the study of self-evaluative judgment accuracy in adults with ADHD. Method: Twenty-eight adults with ADHD and 28 matched controls participate in a computer-administered paired-associate learning task and predict their future recall using immediate and delayed judgments of learning (JOLs). Retrospective confidence judgments are also collected. Results: Groups perform equally in terms of judgment magnitude and absolute judgment accuracy as measured by discrepancy scores and calibration curves. Both groups benefit equally from making their JOL at a delay, and the group with ADHD show higher relative accuracy for delayed judgments. Conclusion: Results suggest that under certain circumstances, adults with ADHD can make accurate judgments about their future memory. (Contains 3 tables, 2 figures, and 1 note.)

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. However, in contrast to a retrieval-fluency hypothesis, fine-grained analyses indicated that the reliance of JOLs on retrieval fluency contributed minimally to the UWP effect. Our discussion focuses on the status of the retrieval-fluency hypothesis for the UWP effect.

Making immediate judgments of learning (JOLs) during study can influence later memory performance, with a common outcome being that JOLs improve cued-recall performance for related word pairs (i.e., positive reactivity) and do not impact memory for unrelated pairs (i.e., no reactivity). The cue-strengthening hypothesis proposes that JOL reactivity will be observed when a criterion test is sensitive to the cues used to inform JOLs (Soderstrom et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41 (2), 553-558, 2015). Across four experiments, we evaluated this hypothesis with category pairs (e.g., A type of gem – Jade) and letter pairs (e.g., Ja – Jade). Participants studied a list comprised of both pair types, made (or did not make) JOLs, and completed a cued-recall test (Experiments 1a/b). The cue-strengthening hypothesis predicts greater positive reactivity for category pairs than for letter pairs, because making a JOL strengthens the relationship between the cue and target, which is more beneficial for material with an a priori semantic relationship. Outcomes were consistent with this hypothesis. We also evaluated and ruled out alternative explanations for this pattern of effects: (a) that they arose due to overall differences in recall performance for the two pair types (Experiment 2); (b) that they would also occur even when the criterion test is not sensitive to the cues used to inform JOLs (Experiment 3); and (c) that JOLs only increased memory strength for the targets (Experiment 4). Thus, the current experiments rule out plausible accounts of reactivity effects and provide further, converging evidence for the cue-strengthening hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making judgments of learning (JOLs) while studying related word pairs can enhance performance on tests that rely on cue-target associations (e.g., cued recall) compared to studying alone. One possible explanation for this positive JOL reactivity effect is that the prompt to make JOLs, which typically occurs halfway through the presentation of each pair, may encourage learners to devote more attention to the pair during the second half of the encoding episode, which may contribute to enhanced recall performance. To investigate this idea, an online sample of participants (Experiment 1) and undergraduate students (Experiment 2) studied a set of moderately related word pairs (e.g., dairy–cow) in preparation for a cued recall test. Some participants made JOLs for each pair halfway through the presentation, whereas other participants did not. Also, some participants were presented with a fixation point halfway through the presentation, whereas other participants were not. The goal of this fixation point was to simulate the possible "reorienting" effect of a JOL prompt halfway through each encoding episode. In both an unsupervised online context and a supervised laboratory context, cued recall performance was higher for participants who made JOLs compared to those who did not make JOLs. However, presenting a fixation point halfway through the presentation of each pair did not lead to reactive effects on memory. Thus, JOLs are more effective than a manipulation that reoriented participants to the word pairs in another way (i.e., via a fixation point), which provides some initial evidence that positive reactivity for related pairs is not solely driven by attentional reorienting during encoding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What constrains people's ability to learn from experience about the effectiveness of practice testing versus restudying for memory (i.e., the testing effect)? Across two cycles, participants studied word pairs, practiced each pair through either restudying or testing, predicted how many pairs they would recall for each strategy, then completed a critical test on the pairs. During this test, participants either received feedback about the number of pairs they had correctly recalled or made postdictions about their performance for each strategy (i.e., generated their own feedback). During both cycles, participants predicted they would recall an equivalent number of tested and restudied pairs, although they actually recalled more tested pairs. However, when participants experienced a larger testing effect, they estimated recall performance more accurately for each strategy and updated their knowledge about the testing effect. Thus, peoples' ability to learn from experience about the testing effect is primarily constrained not by a failure to initiate the metacognitive processes required to monitor and track recall performance by strategy, but by the metacognitive burden of discriminating between small differences in recall between tested versus restudied material. In summary, people can learn from experience about the testing effect when the metacognitive burden is lifted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Production, mediational, and utilization deficiencies, which describe how strategy use may contribute to developmental trends in episodic memory, have been intensively investigated. Using a mediator report-and-retrieval method, the authors present evidence concerning the degree to which 2 previously unexplored mediator-based deficits--retrieval and decoding deficiencies--account for age deficits in learning. During study, older and younger adults were instructed to use a strategy (imagery or sentence generation) to associate words within paired associates. They also reported each mediator and later attempted to retrieve each response and the mediator produced at study. Substantial deficits occurred in mediator recall, and small differences were observed in decoding mediators. Mediator recall also accounted for a substantial proportion of the age deficits in criterion recall independently of fluid or crystallized intelligence. Discussion focuses on mediator-based deficiencies and their implications for theories of age deficits in episodic memory.

When learners make judgments of learning (JOLs) for some word pairs but not others, how and why is recall performance affected? Participants studied related and unrelated word pairs and made JOLs for a randomly selected half of the pairs. We evaluated two hypotheses. The changed-goal hypothesis states that making JOLs leads learners to notice differences in pair difficulty and to change their learning goal. Because JOLs are manipulated within participants, such a goal change should influence how all (judged or non-judged) pairs are processed on the list, which should lead to no JOL reactivity. The cue-strengthening hypothesis predicts greater positive reactivity (i.e., higher recall for judged versus non-judged pairs) for related than unrelated pairs, because making a JOL strengthens the relationship between the two words in a pair, which would be more beneficial for pairs with an a priori relationship. Across experiments, we found positive reactivity for both related and unrelated pairs (albeit to a lesser degree for the latter). We also found no evidence that learners make qualitative changes in their reported strategy use when judging pairs. Making JOLs for some pairs on a list influenced memory performance and the pattern of reactivity provided support for the cue-strengthening hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common measure of memory monitoring——judgments of learning (JOLs)——has recently been shown to have reactive effects on learning. When participants study a list of related and unrelated word pairs, they recall more related than unrelated pairs. This relatedness effect is larger when people make JOLs than when they do not make them. Evidence is mixed concerning whether this increased relatedness effect arises because JOLs help memory for related pairs, hurt it for unrelated pairs, or do both. In three experiments, we investigated (1) the nature of the increased relatedness effect (i.e., does it arise from positive reactivity for related pairs, negative reactivity for unrelated pairs, or both?) and (2) the mechanisms underlying the effect. Participants studied cue-target word pairs and either did (or did not) make immediate JOLs and then completed a cued-recall test. When participants studied a mixed list consisting of related and unrelated pairs, the increased relatedness effect was largely driven by positive reactivity. When participants studied pure lists consisting solely of related or unrelated word pairs (Experiment 2 only), the increased relatedness effect was minimized. These and other findings suggest that making JOLs helps learning more than hurts it, and that this reactive effect partly occurs because making JOLs changes people’s learning goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When study is spaced across sessions (versus massed within a single session), final performance is greater after spacing. This spacing effect may have multiple causes, and according to the mediator hypothesis, part of the effect can be explained by the use of mediator-based strategies. This hypothesis proposes that when study is spaced across sessions, rather than massed within a session, more mediators will be generated that are longer lasting and hence more mediators will be available to support criterion recall. In two experiments, participants were randomly assigned to study paired associates using either a spaced or massed schedule. They reported strategy use for each item during study trials and during the final test. Consistent with the mediator hypothesis, participants who had spaced (as compared to massed) practice reported using more mediators on the final test. This use of effective mediators also statistically accounted for some – but not all of – the spacing effect on final performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age-related differences in memory monitoring appear when people learn emotional words. Namely, younger adults’ judgments of learning (JOLs) are higher for positive than neutral words, whereas older adults’ JOLs do not discriminate between positive versus neutral words. In two experiments, we evaluated whether this age-related difference extends to learning positive versus neutral pictures. We also evaluated the contribution of two dimensions of emotion that may impact younger and older adults’ JOLs: valence and arousal. Younger and older adults studied pictures that were positive or neutral and either high or low in arousal. Participants made immediate JOLs and completed memory tests. In both experiments, the magnitude of older adults’ JOLs was influenced by emotion, and both younger and older adults demonstrated an emotional salience effect on JOLs. As important, the magnitude of participants’ JOLs was influenced by valence, and not arousal. Emotional salience effects were also evident on participants’ free recall, and older adults recalled as many pictures as did younger adults. Taken together, these data suggest that older adults do not have a monitoring deficit when learning positive (vs. neutral) pictures and that emotional salience effects on younger and older adults’ JOLs are produced more by valence than by arousal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to analytic-processing theory, when people are asked to judge their future memory performance, they search for cues that will help them reduce their uncertainty for how well they will remember each item. For instance, many people believe that more fluently performing a task is related to better task performance. Thus, when studying items for an upcoming test, items that are believed to be more easily processed are expected to be judged as more memorable. To test this prediction, we had participants judge their learning of words presented for study in two colors (blue or green), because these colors were not expected to differentially impact processing fluency or memory. During the task instructions, some participants were led to believe that one color was easier to process than another, but nothing was mentioned about whether color was related to memory. Across multiple experiments, color did not consistently influence final test performance, whereas people’s judgments were significantly higher for words printed in the color that had been associated with more fluent processing. In a final experiment, a different instruction was used in which one color was associated with being more calming when read. For participant’s who believed that calming was associated with better memory, JOLs were higher for the words presented in the allegedly calming color. This evidence supports analytic-processing theory and further highlights the central (and sometimes subtle) role of people’s beliefs as they judge their learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directed forgetting magnitude increases when participants use forgetting strategies (Foster & Sahakyan, 2011). Furthermore, intentional forgetting ability may depend on memory monitoring if active engagement in the task is motivated by awareness of this ability. Accordingly, across four experiments, we investigated whether people judged that they could engage in intentional forgetting by measuring the sensitivity of list-level, or global , judgments of learning (JOLs). Participants studied two lists of words: List 1 was cued to be forgotten or remembered, but List 2 was always cued to be remembered. JOLs for both lists were collected under contexts of actual forget or remember cues (single-cue groups; Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or hypothetical remember and forget cues (contrasted group; Experiments 3 and 4). Sensitivity to directed forgetting costs was most evident when JOLs were made in close temporal proximity, suggesting that beliefs about costs emerge from contrasting the cues. Sensitivity to directed forgetting benefits depended on (a) List 2 study and (b) beneficial influence that forgetting List 1 had on List 2. Also, awareness of directed forgetting rarely coincided with actual directed forgetting effects. These results suggest that intentional forgetting does not depend on awareness of the ability to forget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When learning items that vary in reward, students improve their scores (i.e., earned reward) with task experience. In four experiments, we examined whether such improvements arise from better selective encoding of items that would earn more (vs. less) reward. Participants studied and recalled words across multiple study-test trials. On each trial, 12 words were slated with different values (typically from 1 to 12), and participants earned the point value assigned to a given word if it was correctly recalled. In all experiments, participants earned more points across the first two trials. In Experiment 1, participants either self-paced their study or had experimenter-paced study and in Experiment 2, some participants were penalised for each second spent during study. Improvements in points earned were related to increases in overall recall but not to selective encoding. In Experiment 3, some participants were given value-emphasised instructions, yet they did not demonstrate selective encoding. In Experiment 4, we used a larger range of point values, but selective encoding still did not account for the improvement in point scores across lists. These results suggest that metacognitively-driven selective encoding is not necessary to observe improvements in value-based learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge updating occurs when people learn about the impacts of variables on memory after experiencing their effects. For instance, judgments of learning (JOLs) for encoding strategies (e.g., imagery and repetition) show no difference during a first study-test trial; however, during a second trial, JOLs better reflect the benefits of the more effective strategy. Although this outcome indicates some knowledge updating, JOLs on a second trial rarely update to reflect the full impact of a given variable. We investigated several explanations for this incomplete updating. Evidence using prestudy JOLs from Experiments 1 and 2 disconfirmed the encoding-disrupts-updating (EDU) hypothesis, which is that the experience of encoding items on the second trial disrupts the use of new knowledge in making JOLs. In Experiment 3, we used binary JOLs to evaluate whether the lack of updating is an artifact of people not wanting to use extreme ratings, which accounted for some-but not all-of the incomplete updating. Finally, in Experiment 4, immediately after the test on the initial trial, participants received feedback about how many items they had recalled for each level of the focal variable, and their JOLs on the second trial still showed incomplete updating. Taken together, the evidence suggests that incomplete knowledge updating on JOLs arises from multiple factors, including a scaling artifact and the deficient use of accurate knowledge when making JOLs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]