Perceptual fluency, auditory generation, and metamemory: Analyzing the perceptual fluency hypothesis in the auditory modality.

Abstract

Judgments of learning (JOLs) are sometimes influenced by factors that do not impact actual memory performance. One recent proposal is that perceptual fluency during encoding affects metamemory and is a basis of metacognitive illusions. In the present experiments, participants identified aurally presented words that contained inter-spliced silences (the generate condition) or that were intact, a manipulation analogous to visual generation manipulations. The generate condition produced lower perceptual fluency as assessed by both accuracy and identification latency. Consistent with the perceptual fluency hypothesis, the less fluent, generate condition produced lower JOLs than the intact condition. However, actual memory performance was greater in the generation than intact condition in free recall (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 3). The negative effect of generation on JOLs occurred for both aggregate and item-by-item JOLs, but in the latter case, the positive generation effect in actual memory performance was reduced or eliminated (as also occurs with visual generation tasks; Experiments 2 and 4). Furthermore, the decrease in perceptual fluency produced by the generation manipulation was correlated with the decrease in JOLs for this condition (Experiment 5). The negative effect of generation on JOLs persisted even when participants were warned that the generation condition produces equal or greater memory performance compared to the intact condition (Experiment 6). The results are in accord with the perceptual fluency hypothesis and show that this metamemory illusion is related to objective measures of perceptual difficulty. With regard to actual memory performance, this novel auditory generation manipulation produces results consistent with those produced in the visual modality.

Instructor accents in online education and their effect on learning and attitudes

“…In sum, it appears that changes to the perceptual experience of a text that make perceptual decoding more difficult can have severe implications on not only attitudes towards the information in the text, but also readers' evaluation of how well they have learned the information. Importantly, this phenomenon has not been limited to text processing alone, and has also been observed in relation to other visual and perceptual characteristics such as visual aesthetics, branding and auditory generation tasks (Besken & Mulligan, 2014;Lee & Labroo, 2004;Reber, Schwarz & Winkielman, 2004). This further suggests that any manipulation that affects perceptual fluency, in any perceptual modality, may produce changes in attitudes or judgements of the to-be-learned information.…”

The relatedness effect on judgments of learning: A closer look at the contribution of processing fluency

“…To our knowledge, however, no factor beyond processing fluency and beliefs has been proposed or found to influence JOLs so far. It therefore is reasonable to assume that direct effects of relatedness on JOLs reflect a combination of beliefs and some remaining portion of processing fluency (for a similar rationale, see Besken & Mulligan, 2014). Considering that the proportion of the relatedness effect mediated by processing fluency did not exceed 26 % of the total effect in any of our experiments and that metacognitive beliefs have been shown to be involved in the relatedness effect (Mueller et al, 2013), it is likely that beliefs contributed to the relatedness effect in the current studies as well.…”

The effect of motoric fluency on metamemory

“…Mueller, Dunlosky, Tauber, & Rhodes, 2014). For example, Besken and Mulligan (2014) found a crossed double dissociation between memory predictions and actual memory performance using degraded auditory stimuli. Participants heard digitized recordings of study words that were either intact or interspersed with very brief silences, making a judgment of learning (JOL) for each one in which they rated their confidence in remembering the word on a later test.…”

“…Researchers have documented a variety of cues and heuristics that people use to make memory predictions (Bjork, Dunlosky, & Kornell, 2013). Specifically, processing fluency (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009), such as ease of perception (e.g., Besken & Mulligan, 2014) or ease of encoding (e.g., as measured by self-paced study time, Koriat & Ma'ayan, 2005), has been shown to influence these judgments. However, fluency is not necessarily associated with better memory performance, and therefore the use of fluency cues can produce metacognitive illusions (e.g., Benjamin, Bjork, & Schwartz, 1998;.…”