Does the amount of material to be remembered influence judgements of learning (JOLs)?

Abstract

The current study examined predictions of memory performance as a function of the amount of information to be remembered. In four experiments participants studied and made judgements of learning (JOLs) for long or short lists of words. Results demonstrated that participants provided lower JOLs for long compared with short lists. However, whereas JOLs for short lists strongly corresponded with memory performance, participants' JOLs were consistently overconfident for long lists. Participants were unable to remedy this overconfidence for long lists even when provided information about the list length conditions or warned that a long list of words is difficult to learn. Only when given a prior list learning experience were JOLs for a long list consistent with memory performance. These data indicate that predictions of memory performance are sensitive to the amount of material TBR. However, predictions only correspond with the amount of information to-be-remembered under limited circumstances, providing support for frameworks which suggest that memory predictions are inferential in nature.

Keywords:

• Metacognition
• Metamemory
• Memory
• List length

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Alan Castel for comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Additionally, we would like to thank Paul Coleman, Cara Cook, Kristen Mackenzie, Gabby O'Donnell, Talyn Olguin, Alyssa Palty, and Ana Senior for assistance with data collection.

Notes

^{1 1}We also examined item position for all experiments by dividing the list into thirds. As the patterns did not vary significantly from the data reported with each experiment, we report item position data only for the first and last 10 list items.

^{2 2}Data from a 30-item word list were also collected in order to further explore boundary conditions for the list length effect. Results (available on request) demonstrated that participants were well calibrated for list lengths of 10 or 30 items, while being more poorly calibrated for a list of 100 items, indicating that JOLs can be sensitive to list length with lists up to at least 30 words.

³A list length of 60 words was selected for the longer list-length condition in order to be able to fit the experiment into a 1-hour session and to explore differing list length conditions across experiments.