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)

A central question in the metacognitive literature concerns whether the act of making a metacognitive judgment alters one’s memory for the information about which the judgment was made. Dougherty, Scheck, Nelson, and Narens (2005, Memory & Cognition, 33(6), 1096–1115) attempted to address this question by having participants make either retrospective confidence judgments (RCJs; i.e., evaluations of past retrieval success), judgments of learning (JOLs; i.e., predictions of future retrieval success), or no explicit judgments. When comparing final retrieval accuracy they found that accuracy was greater for items where participants had made JOLs compared with items that received RCJs or no judgment, suggesting that simply making a JOL can improve later memory performance. The present article presents results from four separate replication attempts that fail to duplicate this finding. Combined results provide compelling evidence that making a metacognitive judgment, regardless of the type, has no impact on later memory performance above and beyond retrieval practice.     

When disfluency is—and is not—a desirable difficulty: The influence of typeface clarity on metacognitive judgments and memory

There are many instances in which perceptual disfluency leads to improved memory performance, a phenomenon often referred to as the perceptual-interference effect (e.g., Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, & Vaughn (Cognition 118:111–115, 2010); Nairne (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 14:248–255, 1988)). In some situations, however, perceptual disfluency does not affect memory (Rhodes & Castel (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 137:615–625, 2008)), or even impairs memory (Glass, (Psychology and Aging 22:233–238, 2007)). Because of the uncertain effects of perceptual disfluency, it is important to establish when disfluency is a “desirable difficulty” (Bjork, 1994) and when it is not, and the degree to which people’s judgments of learning (JOLs) reflect the consequences of processing disfluent information. In five experiments, our participants saw multiple lists of blurred and clear words and gave JOLs after each word. The JOLs were consistently higher for the perceptually fluent items in within-subjects designs, which accurately predicted the pattern of recall performance when the presentation time was short (Exps. 1a and 2a). When the final test was recognition or when the presentation time was long, however, we found no difference in recall for clear and blurred words, although JOLs continued to be higher for clear words (Exps. 2b and 3). When fluency was manipulated between subjects, neither JOLs nor recall varied between formats (Exp. 1b). This study suggests a boundary condition for the desirable difficulty of perceptual disfluency and indicates that a visual distortion, such as blurring a word, may not always induce the deeper processing necessary to create a perceptual-interference effect.     

Lexicality and phonological similarity: A challenge for the retrieval‐based account of serial recall?

The retrieval‐based account of serial recall () attributes lexicality, phonological similarity, and articulatory suppression effects to a process where long‐term representations are used to reconstruct degraded phonological traces. Two experiments tested this assumption by manipulating these factors in the recall of four‐ and five‐item lists of words and non‐words. Lexicality enhanced item recall (IR), but only affected position accuracy (PA) for five‐item lists under suppression. Phonological similarity influenced both words and non‐words, and produced impaired PA in silent and suppressed conditions. Consistent with the retrieval‐based account, words and non‐words of high word‐likeness appear subject to redintegration. However, some findings, like suppression not reducing the phonological similarity impairment in suppressed conditions, present challenges for the retrieval‐based account and other models of serial recall.     

Effects of pointing on the recall of simultaneous and sequential visuospatial arrays: a role for retrieval strategies?

The present four experiments examined the effects of pointing movements towards the target locations in a modified free recall task. Three factors were manipulated: the order of the move/no-move trials (blocked or mixed), the type of stimuli presentation (simultaneous or sequential) and the size of the to-be-recalled configurations (7-9 and 5-7 items). Results showed that pointing significantly decreased visuospatial performance both with a mixed and a blocked design. However, in the blocked condition the interference effect of pointing was load-dependent (being inversely related to array size) and occurred only when participants pointed to all stimuli in the first block. Post hoc analyses supported the conclusion that pointing movements interfered with the on-line development of appropriate retrieval strategies, like parsing the configurations into smaller chunks or creating global visual images.     

Semantic and repetition priming effects for Deese/Roediger—McDermott (DRM) critical items and associates produced by DRM and unrelated study lists

Two lexical decision experiments investigated priming for a critical item (CI, sleep) and its related yoked associate (YA, blanket) when one had been studied in a related Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) list (Experiments 1 & 2) or a list of totally unrelated words (Experiment 2) and the other had been nonstudied. Semantic priming from the related DRM list occurred for nonstudied CIs (but not YAs) regardless of whether the CI received within-test priming from its studied related YA during the lexical decision task, though the effect in the absence of within-test priming averaged across experiments was only significant by a one-tailed test. Also averaged across experiments, repetition priming occurred for both studied CIs and YAs when they had been studied in related DRM lists whether or not there was also within-test priming from a nonstudied related yoked pairmate, though individual effects within the two experiments were sometimes not significant. Repetition priming boosted semantic priming from related DRM lists less for CIs than for YAs, similar to the finding that memory discriminability is poorer for CIs than for YAs in episodic recognition. This smaller repetition priming boost for CIs than for YAs occurred to the same degree when the CIs or YAs were studied in an unrelated list. When nonstudied CIs and YAs were totally unrelated to all previously studied items and separated by 3-7 items in the lexical decision task, aYA produced a small 16 msec priming effect for its CI, averaged across both experiments. The implications of these results for the activation account of the DRM false-memory effect and for single-prime versus multiple-prime long-term semantic priming effects are discussed. The online addendum may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

"Ratio" and "difference" judgments for length, area, and volume: are there two classes of sensory continua?

Subjects were required to judge ratios and differences of (a) line length for pairs of lines, (b) area for pairs of squares, and (c) volume for pairs of cubes. Nonmetric analyses of these judgments indicated that all subjects were able to make consistent ratio judgments for all three continua. Many of the subjects, when asked to judge subjective differences, however, performed as if they were judging subjective ratios rather than differences. The data for the few subjects who appeared to be judging subjective differences were not consistent across subjects and conditions. Previous studies of ratio and difference judgments of loudness and heaviness, on the other hand, showed the opposite pattern, in that subjects most often behaved as if they were judging sensory differences when asked to judge sensory ratios. We propose that ratio judgments are more natural to perceptual continua along which stimuli are easily "decomposed" into a number of smaller perceptual units.     

Working with animals: Implications for employees’ compassion,awe, prosocial behavior,and task performance

Human-animal work represents a collaboration between humans and animals to achieve work goals, and is common in the domains of healthcare, therapy, entertainment, and education. Although the scope and types of human-animal work is diversifying and increasing, organizational scholars have yet to explore its impacts on employees. Drawing from the models of compassion and mind perception theories, we first develop a theoretical model pertaining to the development of compassion as a result of human-animal work. In a study with zookeepers (Study 1), we find that human-animal work evokes the emotion of compassion, which in turn is positively associated with employee prosocial behavior and task performance. These mediated effects are moderated by how employees perceive animals—employees are more likely to experience compassion, and in turn, become more prosocial and work better when they generally perceive animals to be able to experience emotions and bodily sensations. Furthermore, two follow-up studies (i.e., Studies 2 and 3) with employees who engage in human-animal work in Hong Kong and the United States reveal that working with animals evokes awe in addition to compassion, and provides insight into their resultant impact on prosocial behavior and task performance. We end by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of this work.     

Masculinity—Femininity in children's self-concepts: The relationship to teachers' judgments of social adjustment and academic ability,classroom behaviors,and popularity

This study explored the response of peers and teachers to children who differed in the extent to which their self-concepts included traits which children view as masculine or feminine. It was hypothesized that teachers would judge relatively more masculine children to be inferior in (1) academic ability and (2) social adjustment compared to more feminine children, and that these relationships would be independent of IQ. Relationships between masculine—feminine self-concept and observable classroom behaviors were examined, particularly the impact of classroom behavior on teachers' evaluations of masucline versus feminine children. Finally, the relationship between masculine—feminine self-concept and popularity was studied. Subjects were 64 middle-class fourth and fifth graders. For boys, the hypotheses were supported for evaluations made by seven women teachers. Evaluations made by one man teacher did not support the hypotheses. Neither hypothesis was supported for girls. Among boys, relative masculinity was associated with a distinctive pattern of classroom behavior, and this statistically accounted for women teachers' negative evaluations of the more masculine boys. For boys, the relationship between popularity and masculine—feminine self-concept differed significantly between classroom settings; while for girls there were no significant relationships. Methodological issues, sex differences in the importance of sex-typing of self-concept, teacher sex differences, and implications for mental health are discussed.The author acknowledges the invaluable assistance of the following persons: Kevin McClearey assisted in the initial development of the observation procedure; Jessica Broitman and Dennis Quintana conducted the observations; Dennis Quintana assisted in developing the items for the masculine—feminine self-concept questionnaire; Ms. Judy Hermann, Principal, offered cooperation in the school setting; Drs. William Hodges and Donald Weatherley offered criticisms of an earlier version of this paper. An earlier, condensed version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Los Angeles, 1976.     

Investigating the encoding—retrieval match in recognition memory: Effects of experimental design,specificity, and retention interval

Five experiments investigated the encoding-retrieval match in recognition memory by manipulating read and generate conditions at study and at test. Experiments 1A and 1B confirmed previous findings that reinstating encoding operations at test enhances recognition accuracy in a within-groups design but reduces recognition accuracy in a between-groups design. Experiment 2A showed that generating from anagrams at study and at test enhanced recognition accuracy even when study and test items were generated from different anagrams. Experiment 2B showed that switching from one generation task at study (e.g., anagram solution) to a different generation task at test (e.g., fragment completion) eliminated this recognition advantage. Experiment 3 showed that the recognition advantage found in Experiment 1A is reliably present up to 1 week after study. The findings are consistent with theories of memory that emphasize the importance of the match between encoding and retrieval operations.     

Predicting performance times from deliberate practice hours for triathletes and swimmers: what, when, and where is practice important?

In Studies 1 and 2, the authors evaluated deliberate practice theory through analyses of the relationship between practice and performance for 2 populations of athletes: triathletes and swimmers, respectively. In Study 3, the authors obtained evaluations of practice from athletes' diaries. Across athletes, length of time involved in fitness activities was not related to performance. For the triathletes, a significant percentage of variance in performance was captured by practice. This was not so for sprint events for the swimmers, in which gender was a significant predictor. In the diaries, physical activities were perceived as enjoyable. In contrast to the results obtained from questionnaires, enjoyment did not covary with an activity's relevance to improving performance. Although these findings highlight the importance of sport-specific practice, the authors question a domain-independent account of expertise based on deliberate practice.     

Need for recovery, home-work interference and performance: Is lack of concentration the link?

This study examines the mechanisms through which experiences in the home domain influence work performance by bringing together the literature on recovery and the work-family interface. A longitudinal study among 123 employees from different organizations was conducted to investigate whether need for recovery and home-work interference (HWI) impeded concentration at work 1 month later, and whether concentration adversely affected in-role performance over time. Structural equation modeling analysis supported these hypotheses. Whereas need for recovery and HWI had negative, lagged effects on concentration, concentration had a positive lagged effect on in-role performance. Moreover, need for recovery and HWI were reciprocal and negatively related over time, suggesting that these two states may create a negative spiral in the home domain that could easily intrude into the work domain. These findings increase our insight in the processes leading to reduced performance at work, and suggest that organizations should facilitate opportunities for recovery.