Anchoring effects on prospective and retrospective metacomprehension judgments as a function of peer performance information

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to investigate anchoring effects on metacomprehension judgments as a function of fictitious information participants received about past peer performance. In Experiment 1 participants were randomly assigned to one of the three anchor groups that, in some cases, provided past peer performance averages in terms of a percentage: a high anchor (85%) a low anchor (55%), and no anchor. Results showed that relative to the no anchor group, the low anchor group made significantly lower prospective judgments whereas the high anchor group did not make significantly higher prospective judgments. With a high anchor of greater magnitude (95%), Experiment 2 demonstrated more pronounced anchoring effects on prospective judgments: Relative to the no anchor group, the low anchor group made significantly lower judgments and the high anchor group made significantly higher judgments. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that anchoring effects occurred even on retrospective judgments. Overall, the results showed that peer performance information can serve as an anchoring point for metacomprehension judgments and the anchoring effects are tenacious given that they can even affect retrospective judgments of performance.Keywords Anchoring . Prospective metacomprehension judgment . Retrospective metacomprehension judgment . Peer performance Who of us have not had the experience of reading a set of text materials and then realized that we have comprehended some texts better than others? Suppose there is an upcoming exam that tests our comprehension of the texts, we might expect better performance for Metacognition Learning (2011) 6:25-43

Fluency and Feeling of Rightness

“…Although the underlying cognitive mechanisms of the anchoring effect are still under study, the anchoring effect is a robust phenomenon which has been extensively studied in persuasion, attitude, judgments and decision-making (for review, see Furnham & Boo, 2011). Although, it has not been widely investigated as a potential cue to examine metacognitive judgments, the available data suggest that anchoring can be used to manipulate metacognitive judgements such as JOL (England & Serra, 2012;Yang, Sun, & Shanks, 2018;Zhao, 2012;Zhao & Linderholm, 2011), and by extension, FOR.…”

“…Specifically, Zhao and Linderholm (2011) and Zhao (2012) explored the anchoring effect on metacomprehension, which is people's ability to judge their own understanding of text materials. Participants were given texts to study and were asked about how well they would perform on future tests for the materials they just studied.…”

“…In these studies, the anchoring values were informative, in that they provided participants with relevant information about peer performance of the same task. When the anchor values were irrelevant to the task performance, that is, they were uninformative, the relationship between anchoring and the metacognitive judgements was less clear (England & Serra, 2012;Zhao, 2012;Zhao & Linderholm, 2011). To address this gap in the research and to elucidate the role of anchoring in metamemory monitoring and control, Yang et al (2018) conducted a series of experiments.…”

“…One possible explanation is that the size of anchors, unlike the number of models, can affect the judgement of the experience (i.e., FOR), but not the experience per se. FOR is intended to capture the judgement of the experience of being correct, which like other judgements can be altered by means such as anchoring (England & Serra, 2012;Yang et al, 2018;Zhao, 2012;Zhao & Linderholm, 2011). It is plausible that answer fluency is the source of the actual experience, which in turn predicts peoples' subsequent re-answer choices.…”

Adding judgments of understanding to the metacognitive toolbox

“…"How well do you expect to do on an inference question" scale 1-6 (Weaver, 1990) "Please estimate on a scale from 0% to 100% how well you would do on a multiple-choice comprehension test about the text you just read." (Zhao & Linderholm, 2010) "Of the titles listed above, which of the texts (readings) was the easiest to understand?" Rank all titles.…”