The influence of judgments of learning on long-term learning and short-term performance.

Abstract

Students must retain information they learn in class over the long term because it may be foundational for upperlevel classes or for use in their field. Recently, researchers have demonstrated that making judgments of learning (JOLs) can enhance students' short-term performance; however, it is unclear how they influence long-term learning. We evaluated this issue in three experiments. Participants studied related word pairs (e.g., castle-king). Half of the participants made a JOL for each pair and half did not. Participants took a cued-recall test after either a long retention interval (2 days) or short retention interval (3 min). Participants who made JOLs outperformed participants who did not, which was evident on long-term learning as well as short-term performance. Continuously cumulating meta-analyses revealed that these effects were strong (long-term learning, d = .66; short-term performance, d = .71). Thus, making JOLs appears to be an effective strategy to increase long-term retention of related information.

The effect of delayed judgments of learning on retention

“…In Soderstrom et al ( 2015 ), subjects who made immediate JOLs while studying related and unrelated pairs recalled more related pairs than subjects who studied the word pairs without JOLs (i.e., positive JOL reactivity for related pairs). Witherby and Tauber ( 2017 ) replicated positive JOL reactivity for related pairs and showed that similar results were obtained on a two-day delayed cued recall test as well (also see Janes et al 2018 ). Indeed, in a meta-analysis, Double et al ( 2018 ) reported that immediate JOLs were moderately reactive measures for related pairs (also see Rhodes 2016 ).…”

Reactivity to Measures of Metacognition

“…The evidence for reactivity to JOLs is so far equivocal. A majority of studies observed positive reactivity (Zechmeister and Shaughnessy, 1980; Dougherty et al, 2005; Soderstrom et al, 2015; Witherby and Tauber, 2017; Janes et al, 2018); however, others have found no reactivity (Kelemen and Weaver, 1997; Benjamin et al, 1998; Tauber and Rhodes, 2012). While a recent study by Mitchum et al (2016) found negative reactivity.…”

“…As mentioned previously, the demand to self-assess prompted by measures of metacognition may focus participants on short-term performance, which may or may not come at the expense of long-term learning (Double and Birney, 2017b). Witherby and Tauber (2017) performed one of the only studies of the long-term effects of eliciting JOLs on recall. In a series of experiments, they found that eliciting JOLs during the presentation of related word-pairs improved both short-term (3-min) and long-term (2 days) retention.…”

Quantifying the impacts of expanding social protection on efficiency and equity: Evidence from a behavioral microsimulation model for Ghana

“…The dominance of persons in pairwise associations can be also seen as a sign of ease in using persons as cues to make associative connections. In word association studies focusing on connections between cue-words and target-words, it has been found that self-beliefs about ease of memorisation affect the ability to memorise the connections (Witherby and Tauber 2017). A plausible assumption is that persons' names are easier to retrieve from the memory than colligatory concepts (like the Enlightenment) that refer to colligatory, connected set of events.…”