The Relationship between Dispositional Mindfulness and Relative Accuracy of Judgments of Learning: The Moderating Role of Test Anxiety.

Research has demonstrated that metacognition accuracy is far from perfect. The accuracy of judgments of learning (JOLs) is of critical importance in self-regulated learning. To explore what factors constrain JOL accuracy, the current study focused on mindfulness, which is intimately related to metacognition and anxiety. A total of 203 undergraduates (198 valid samples) were recruited to determine the relationships among five dimensions of dispositional mindfulness, test anxiety, and relative accuracy of JOLs. Results revealed that the interaction term for acting with awareness and test anxiety significantly predicted JOL accuracy. Further analyses indicated that for individuals with high test anxiety, but not for those with low test anxiety, acting with awareness positively predicted JOL accuracy. Considering that dispositional mindfulness is modifiable, these results help to inspire researchers to further explore whether mindfulness training can be used as a remedy to improve JOL accuracy.

Does Interactive Imagery Influence the Reactive Effect of Judgments of Learning on Memory?

Making judgments of learning (JOLs) while studying is a useful tool for students to evaluate the status of their learning. Additionally, in associative learning contexts, JOLs can directly benefit learning when the to-be-learned information is related. One explanation for this reactive effect is that making JOLs strengthens the associative relationship, leading to enhanced memory performance when a test relies on that relationship (e.g., cued-recall tests). In the present research, we evaluated whether having students make interactive mental images-another strategy that can increase the strength of a cue-target relationship-impacts the reactive effect of JOLs on learning. Students studied word pairs that were related and unrelated. Half of the students were instructed to form a mental image of the words interacting, whereas the other half were not. Additionally, in each group half of the students made a JOL for each pair, whereas half did not. Following a short delay, students completed a cued-recall test. Consistent with prior research, students who made JOLs remembered more related word pairs than did students who did not. By contrast, students who made JOLs recalled fewer unrelated word pairs than did students who did not. Moreover, although students who formed interactive images demonstrated enhanced memory relative to students who did not, interactive imagery did not impact the reactive effect of JOLs. These outcomes are informative for existing theory of JOL reactivity. Specifically, JOLs may only benefit learning of associative information when it has a pre-existing semantic relationship (e.g., related word pairs) and not when that that relationship is created by the learner (e.g., by forming interactive images).

Making judgments of learning enhances memory by inducing item-specific processing.

A judgment of leaning (JOL) has been investigated to understand self-regulated learning. However, asking participants to make JOLs may increase memory by creating a reactivity effect. In two experiments, we examined whether making JOLs would enhance memory by inducing item-specific processing. We compared a JOL task with two other tasks that are known to induce item-specific processing: pleasantness rating (Experiment 1) and single imagery (Experiment 2; creating vivid mental images). Participants learned a categorized or uncategorized list of words. Memory should be enhanced when the list promotes relational processing and the task induces item-specific processing. As expected, when the list was categorized, recall was higher in the JOL and item-specific processing conditions (pleasantness rating and single imagery) than in the control condition. Furthermore, recall was similar between the JOL and item-specific processing conditions. When the list was uncategorized, there was no difference in recall among the JOL, item-specific processing, and control conditions. Making JOLs enhances memory by inducing item-specific processing. We concluded that researchers need to carefully consider how making a JOL influences memory when investigating self-regulated study behaviors.

The influence of visual mental imagery size on metamemory accuracy in judgment of learning.

Many studies have found the font size of to-be-remembered words has a significant influence on judgments of learning (JOLs). However, few studies have investigated whether JOLs are affected by the mental imagery size of to-be-remembered words, even when the font sizes themselves are kept identical in study materials. This study investigated whether the visual mental imagery size influences the participants' JOLs and what the underlying mechanisms are. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants learned words with identical font sizes, mentally generated large or small imageries and then made JOLs. We found that JOLs under the large imagery condition were significantly higher than those under the small imagery condition, but actual recall performance exhibited no significant difference. In Experiment 3, participants pressed a button immediately after mental imagery generation and showed that it took significantly longer to generate large imageries than to generate small imageries, and the difference in JOLs between two conditions was no longer significant. In Experiment 4, we used a questionnaire to investigate the contribution of beliefs and found that participants believed large imageries were easier to remember. These findings indicate that imagery size has a significant impact on JOLs, in which beliefs may play a leading role.

The concreteness effect on judgments of learning: Evaluating the contributions of fluency and beliefs.

Researchers have often determined how cues influence judgments of learning (JOLs; e.g., concrete words are assigned higher JOLs than are abstract words), and recently there has been an emphasis in understanding why cues influence JOLs (i.e., the mechanisms that underlie cue effects on JOLs). The analytic-processing (AP) theory posits that JOLs are constructed in accordance with participants' beliefs of how a cue will influence memory. Even so, some evidence suggests that fluency is also important to cue effects on JOLs. In the present experiments, we investigated the contributions of participants' beliefs and processing fluency to the concreteness effect on JOLs. To evaluate beliefs, participants estimated memory performance in a hypothetical experiment (Experiment 1), and studied concrete and abstract words and made a pre-study JOL for each (Experiments 2 and 3). Participants' predictions demonstrated the belief that concrete words are more likely to be remembered than are abstract words, consistent with the AP theory. To evaluate fluency, response latencies were measured during lexical decision (Experiment 4), self-paced study (Experiment 5), and mental imagery (Experiment 7). Number of trials to acquisition was also evaluated (Experiment 6). Fluency did not differ between concrete and abstract words in Experiments 5 and 6, and it did not mediate the concreteness effect on JOLs in Experiments 4 and 7. Taken together, these results demonstrate that beliefs are a primary mechanism driving the concreteness effect on JOLs.