When asking the question changes the ultimate answer: Metamemory judgments change memory.

Abstract

Self-report measurements are ubiquitous in psychology, but they carry the potential of altering processes they are meant to measure. We assessed whether a common metamemory measure, judgments of learning, can change the ongoing process of memorizing and subsequent memory performance. Judgments of learning are a form of metamemory monitoring described as conscious reflection on one's own memory performance or encoding activities for the purpose of exerting strategic control over one's study and retrieval activities (T. O. Nelson & Narens, 1990). Much of the work examining the conscious monitoring of encoding relies heavily on a paradigm in which participants are asked to estimate the probability that they will recall a given item in a judgment of learning. In 5 experiments, we find effects of measuring judgments of learning on how people allocate their study time to difficult versus easy items, and on what they will recall. These results suggest that judgments of learning are partially constructed in response to the measurement question. The tendency of judgments of learning to alter performance places them in the company of other reactive verbal reporting methods, counseling researchers to consider incorporating control groups, creating alternative scales, and exploring other verbal reporting methods. Less directive methods of accessing participants' metacognition and other judgments should be considered as an alternative to response scales.

Do metacognitive judgments alter memory performance beyond the benefits of retrieval practice? A comment on and replication attempt of Dougherty, Scheck, Nelson, and Narens (2005)

“…Many studies have shown reactive effects of immediate JOLs (JOLs that take place immediately following learning) on memory performance (Mitchum, Kelley, & Fox, 2016;Soderstrom, Clark, Halamish, & Bjork, 2015). In some of these studies, the act of making an immediate JOL during learning is found to improve later memory performance (Soderstrom, et al 2015), whereas other studies show that making JOLs leads to poorer memory performance relative to a no-judgment control (Mitchum et al, 2016). Retrieval attempts are not expected to take place prior to immediate JOLs as there is no delay between learning and judgment, suggesting that benefits, when they occur, are likely due to the judgment itself, perhaps by enticing participants to engage in a form of elaboration during learning.…”

The forward testing effect on self-regulated study time allocation and metamemory monitoring.

“…Another reason is that previous studies showed that asking participants to make JOLs affects their self-regulated study time allocation. For example, when expecting to make JOLs people may spend some time considering the memorability of an item, and devote a portion of the encoding time to assessing their on-going learning status (Mitchum, Kelley, & Fox, 2016). Therefore, to directly explore the forward testing effect on metamemory monitoring, we employed an experimenter-paced procedure.…”

A matter of priorities: High working memory enables (slightly) superior value-directed remembering

“…Self-reports rely on introspection, which risks being incomplete, biased, or based heavily on inference due to failures of memory when collected after the fact (Ericsson & Simon, 1993). If strategies are assessed during encoding, the reports themselves are more accurate, but the solicitation may lead subjects to change strategies (cf., Mitchum, Kelley, & Fox, 2016).…”