Two dissociable aspects of feeling-of-knowing: Knowing that you know and knowing that you do not know

Abstract

Feeling-of-knowing judgement is traditionally regarded as a unitary cognitive process. However, recent research suggests that knowing that you know (positive feeling-of-knowing) and knowing that you do not know (negative feeling-of-knowing) have different neural substrates (Luo, Niki, Ying, & Luo, 2004). In the present study, we used a paradigm adapted from Koriat and Levy-Sadot (2001) to examine whether positive feeling-of-knowing and negative feeling-of-knowing were mediated by distinct cognitive processes. We found that positive and negative feeling-of-knowing were dissociated during immediate feeling-of-knowing judgements (i.e., preliminary feeling-of-knowing) and delayed feeling-of-knowing judgements (i.e., postretrieval feeling-of-knowing). At the judgement intervals, positive feeling-of-knowing was based on partial recovery of the nonrecalled targets, whereas negative feeling-of-knowing was determined by familiarity with the retrieval cues. Our results suggest that feeling-of-knowing is a heterogeneous process.

This research was supported by the Beijing Key Laboratory. The authors thank Dr. Yuhong Jiang and Dr. Qi Chen for helping us to revise the manuscript. We also thank Dr. Asher Koriat for providing helpful suggestions.