Effects of self-referencing on feeling-of-knowing accuracy and recollective experience

The current research investigated the impact of self-referencing (SR) on feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgements to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying these metamemory judgements and specifically test the relationship between recollective experiences and FOK accuracy within the accessibility framework FOK judgements are thought to be by-products of the retrieval process and are therefore closely related to memory performance. Because relating information to one's self is one of the factors enhancing memory performance, we investigated the effect of self-related encoding on FOK accuracy and recollective experience. We compared performance on this condition to a separate deep processing condition in which participants reported the frequency of occurrence of pairs of words. Participants encoded pairs of words incidentally, and following a delay interval, they attempted at retrieving each target prompted by its cue. Then, they were re-presented with all cues and asked to provide FOK ratings regarding their likelihood of recognising the targets amongst distractors. Finally, they were given a surprise recognition task in which following each response they identified whether the response was remembered, known or just guessed. Our results showed that only SR at encoding resulted in better memory, higher FOK accuracy and increased recollective experience.     

The effects of degree of learning,meaning, and invidual differences on the feeling-of-knowing

Research on the feeling-of-knowing (FOK) phenomenon has established it as a valid indicator of the contents of memory and a reliable predictor of subsequent performance. It has been shown that degree of prior learning of items is one factor upon which FOK is based — the ‘overlearning’ effect. The present study was designed to determine, firstly, whether the overlearning effect is due to different numbers of presentations of physical attributes during learning, to encoding variability, or to both, and secondly, whether individual differences in the cognitive style variable of category width affect FOK judgments or accuracy. Using a delayed recall-FOK judgment-recognition paradigm, measures on these tests were obtained from narrow and broad categorizers, who learned paired-associate items to a criterion of 1 or 3 correct recalls. The target item, a homograph, to be produced in response to the cue, a number, was learned either as a word of single or multiple meaning. Results showed that a greater degree of learning did not increase FOK magnitude or accuracy, although it did increase recall and overall recognition. On the other hand, category width and encoding variability did not affect recall and recognition, but did influence magnitude and accuracy of FOK: Broad categorizers gave higher FOK ratings than narrow, and when single meanings of the target only were learned, broad categorizers gave higher ratings than narrow. This finding was not replicated in the accuracy of FOK responses: Broad categorizers were more accurate for multiple target encoding but less accurate for single. Thus FOK is influenced by semantic aspects of the target in different ways by subjects exhibiting different cognitive styles. The study places FOK firmly in the metamemory domain.     

Immediate judgments of learning are insensitive to implicit interference effects at retrieval

We conducted three experiments to determine whether metamemory predictions at encoding, immediate judgments of learning (IJOLs) are sensitive to implicit interference effects that will occur at retrieval. Implicit interference was manipulated by varying the association set size of the cue (Experiments 1 and 2) or the target (Experiment 3). The typical finding is that memory is worse for large-set-size cues and targets, but only when the target is studied alone and later prompted with a related cue (extralist). When the pairs are studied together (intralist), recall is the same regardless of set size; set size effects are eliminated. Metamemory predictions at retrieval, such as delayed JOLs (DJOLs) and feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments accurately reflect implicit interference effects (e.g., Eakin & Hertzog, 2006. In all three experiments, we found that DJOLs and FOKs accurately predicted set size effects on retrieval but that IJOLs did not. The findings provide further evidence that metamemory predictions are inferred from information other than direct access to the state of the memory trace, as well as indicate that inferences are based on different sources depending on when in the memory process predictions are made.     

The relation between feelings of knowing and the number of neighboring concepts linked to the test cue

We investigated whether feeling-of-knowing judgments are influenced by the number of different neighboring concepts linked to the test cue in long-term memory as measured using association norms. The purpose was to evaluate contrasting predictions made by the partial-retrieval hypothesis and the competition hypothesis. The partial-retrieval hypothesis assumes the more neighboring concepts activated by the test cue, the higher the feeling of knowing. In contrast, the competition hypothesis assumes that feelings of knowing are sensitive to competition between neighboring concepts, and it predicts that the fewer neighboring concepts activated by the cue, the higher the feeling of knowing. The findings were compatible with the competition hypothesis showing that both feeling-of-knowing and prediction-of-knowing ratings always were higher, the fewer different concepts were linked to the test cue. We obtained an identical pattern of results using different kinds of cues including taxonomic category names, ending sounds, and meaningfully related associates. We consider different ways that these findings could be reconciled with the partial-retrieval hypothesis, and we also discuss implications for other explanations of feeling-of-knowing effects.     

Effects of aging and divided attention on episodic feeling-of-knowing accuracy

This research investigated the effect of aging on episodic feeling-of-knowing (FOK) using a divided attention (DA) paradigm in order to examine whether DA in younger adults mimics the effects of aging when decreasing either memory encoding or monitoring processes. To that end, four groups of participants were tested on the FOK task: young adults (control group), young adults under DA at encoding, young adults under DA when making FOK judgments, and older adults. Our results showed that DA at encoding in young adults mimicked the effect of aging on memory performance, and also on FOK magnitude and accuracy, supporting the memory-constraint hypothesis ( Hertzog et al., 2010). However, our results do not completely contradict the monitoring-deficit hypothesis, as DA during FOK judgments also affected FOK accuracy, but to a lesser extent than the aging effect or DA during encoding. We suggest that the age-related FOK deficit may be due to a lower level of deep encoding, leading to difficulty retrieving target-related contextual details enabling accurate prediction of subsequent recognition.     

Age differences in feeling-of-knowing and confidence judgements as a function of knowledge domain

For two semantic knowledge domains, general and computer-related, feeling-of-knowing (FOK) and confidence level (CL) ratings and their relative accuracy were assessed in young, middle-aged, and older adults, after test difficulty was equated across age groups. Global memory self-efficacy beliefs were also assessed for each domain. As expected, greater age was associated with poorer memory self-efficacy beliefs only in the computer domain. The oldest two groups were found to be more underconfident than young adults when rating their FOK but not their CL, for computer items but not for general items. Statistical control of age differences in memory self-efficacy beliefs in the relevant domain greatly reduced this age effect on computer-related FOK ratings. This finding suggests that absolute FOK judgments are more closely related to memory self-efficacy beliefs than are CL judgments. Gamma correlations between judgments and recognition performance revealed that all age groups were equally accurate in FOK and in CL judgments, in both domains.     

Feeling of knowing for names in response to faces

Participants were asked to recall the names when shown photographs of faces in both a semantic task (Experiment 1) and an episodic task (Experiments 2 and 3). When recall failed, feeling of knowing (FOK) ratings were solicited. In addition, participants reported on the strategies that they used to make their ratings, whether they could recall other pieces of information (the target-accessibility strategy, e.g., Koriat, A. (1993). How do we know that? The accessibility model of the feeling of knowing. Psychological Review, 100, 609–639) or whether the faces simply looked familiar (the cue-familiarity strategy, e.g., Schwartz, B. L., & Metcalfe, J. (1992). Cue familiarity but not target accessibility enhances feeling of knowing ratings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 1074–1083). In all experiments, FOK ratings were fairly accurate in that participants were successful in predicting their performance on a subsequent recognition test. More importantly, participants reported using the cue-familiarity strategy more often, although they gave higher FOK ratings when they reported using the target-accessibility strategy. The FOK ratings that were given using the two strategies were equally accurate.     

Prior knowledge and memory: the episodic encoding of implicitly activated associates and rhymes

The presentation of a familiar word activates related concepts, and, once encoded, related concepts interfere with memory for the work actually presented. Presented words that activate larger numbers of related concepts are generally more difficult to recall than those that activate smaller numbers. The purpose of the present experiments was to explore the effects of study-trial orientation and test delay on the encoding of both rhyme- and meaning-related concepts. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that meaning-related concepts are encoded and interfere with memory for the presented target regardless of study-trial orientation. Interference is obtained even when the study-trial context emphasizes phonemic information and subjects are incidentally oriented to rating rhyme properties. However, this interference effect disappears when the test trial is delayed. In contrast, the results of Experiments 1-4 indicate that rhyme-related concepts are encoded and interfere with memory for the presented target only when subjects explicitly attend to the rhyme dimension. Once oriented, this interference effect is found after a relatively long delay. These differences are attributed to differences in attentional processing. The encoding of meaning-related concepts results from relatively automatic processes and the encoding of rhyme-related concepts requires subjects to attend to rhyme.     

Recalled aspects of original encoding strategies influence episodic feelings of knowing

We tested the hypothesis that the feeling of knowing (FOK) after a failed recall attempt is influenced by recalling aspects of the original encoding strategy. Individuals were instructed to use interactive imagery to encode unrelated word pairs. We manipulated item concreteness (abstract vs. concrete) and item repetitions at study (one vs. three). Participants orally described the mediator produced immediately after studying each item, if any. After a delay, they were given cued recall, made FOK ratings, and attempted to recall their original mediator. Concreteness and item repetition enhanced strategy recall, which had a large effect on FOKs. Controlling on strategy recall reduced the predictive validity of FOKs for recognition memory, indicating that access to the original aspects of encoding influenced FOK accuracy. Confidence judgments (CJs) for correctly recognized items covaried with FOKs, but FOKs did not fully track the strategy recall associations with CJs, suggesting emergent effects of strategy cues that were elicited by recognition tests but not accessed at the time of the FOK judgment. In summary, cue-generated access to aspects of the original encoding strategy strongly influenced episodic FOKs, although other influences were also implicated.     

Memory for things forgotten.

As previous research has shown, items not recalled on an initial memory task are not simply forgotten. Often, some can be recalled on a later, second task. Further, subjects can generally predict, in terms of feeling-of-knowing (FOK) ratings, which items will be subsequently recalled. Two experiments were carried out to assess both second-task performance and FOK accuracy for unrecalled items as a function of two factors, encoding manipulations (levels of processing in Experiment 1, study time in Experiment 2) and the nature of the second task (explicit or implicit cued stem completion). Results indicate that although levels of processing affected explicit second-task performance more than implicit second-task performance, it increased FOK accuracy in both types of tasks. Study time, however, affected FOK accuracy only in the explicit second task. Apparently, only when subjects were able to do some elaborative processing on the items did their FOK ratings reflect information relating to factors that drive performance on implicit tasks.     

The role of familiarity in episodic memory and metamemory for music

Participants heard music snippets of varying melodic and instrumental familiarity paired with animal-name titles. They then recalled the target when given either the melody or the title as a cue, or they gave name feeling-of-knowing (FOK) ratings. In general, recall for titles was better than it was for melodies, and recall was enhanced with increasing melodic familiarity of both the cues and the targets. Accuracy of FOK ratings, but not magnitude, also increased with increasing familiarity. Although similar ratings were given after melody and title cues, accuracy was better with title cues. Finally, knowledge of the real titles of the familiar music enhanced recall but had, by and large, no effect on the FOK ratings.     

The Effects of Expertise on the Hindsight Bias

We present data from three experiments examining the effects of objective and subjective expertise on the hindsight bias. In Experiment 1, participants read an essay about baseball or dogs and then answered questions about the baseball essay to the best of their ability, as if they had not read the essay, or to the best of their ability, although they read about dogs. Participants also completed a quiz about baseball rules and terminology, which was an objective measure of expertise. Results demonstrated that as participants' baseball expertise increased, their inability to act as if they never read the essay also increased; expertise exacerbated the hindsight bias. To test the effects of subjective expertise on hindsight bias and investigate factors underlying the relationship, participants in Experiment 2 ranked five topics in order of expertise and gave feeling‐of‐knowing (FOK) ratings for questions from these topics. Foresight participants then saw each question again and answered the questions; hindsight participants saw the questions and answers and gave the probability they would have known the answers had they not been provided. Hindsight bias increased with subjective expertise as did average FOK ratings. In Experiment 3, we experimentally manipulated perceived expertise but found that neither average FOK ratings nor hindsight bias was affected by experimentally induced expertise. Taken together, the results demonstrate that expertise exacerbates both objective and subjective hindsight bias but that an FOK, which likely exists only when expertise is naturally acquired, is necessary to engender the detrimental effect of expertise on the hindsight bias. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Name or hum that tune: Feeling of knowing for music

This is the first reported research that explores the feeling of knowing (FOK) for musical stimuli. Subjects attempted to recall melodies and titles of musical pieces, made FOK ratings when recall failed, and then had a recognition test. With instrumental music (Experiment 1), more titles were recalled when melodies were given as cues than vice versa. With songs whose lyrics were not presented (Experiment 2), however, more melodies were recalled than were titles. For nonrecalled items, although the overall levels of recognition did not differ, FOK ratings were higher for titles than for melodies in Experiment 1, and the opposite pattern occurred in Experiment 2. In both experiments, the FOK ratings predicted melody recognition more accurately than they did title recognition.     

Judgments for inaccessible targets: Comparing recognition without identification and the feeling of knowing

Both the recognition-without-identification (RWI) and feeling-of-knowing (FOK) paradigms attempt to tap participants?? sense about a target that is inaccessible. In the case of RWI, participants judge the likelihood that the inaccessible target was studied. In the case of FOKs, participants judge the likelihood that the inaccessible target will be recognized at a later point in time. The present study compared the two using a hybrid paradigm. The patterns of responding differed depending on whether the judgment was of the RWI type or the FOK type. For the former, ratings were significantly higher for studied than for unstudied inaccessible targets (the typical RWI effect). For the latter, ratings were significantly lower for studied than for unstudied inaccessible targets (a reversal of the usual RWI effect). Similarity of the targets and distractors diminished the usual RWI effect, but not its reversal in the FOK situation, suggesting that the bases of the two effects differ. A potential explanation is that when participants judge whether an inaccessible target was presented earlier, they are oriented toward relying on cue familiarity, which should be greater for cues of studied targets, whereas when they judge whether they will recognize an inaccessible target later on, they are oriented toward relying on the accessibility of information, which is greater in the unstudied condition, due to the lack of priming of the targets.     

Episodic feeling-of-knowing resolution derives from the quality of original encoding

In recent studies, researchers have argued for adult age-related deficits in the resolution of episodic feeling of knowing (FOK) owing to a decline in inferential processes. In the present study, we introduce the memory constraint hypothesis, which argues that deficits are an outcome of differences in the level of learning. A repetition delay paradigm for a list of paired-associate items showed that repeated presentations at encoding increased memory performance and in turn increased FOK resolution for unrecalled items. Older adults who were given a 48-h delay between encoding and subsequent tests (and FOKs) had equivalent memory performance to younger adults who were given a 7-day delay. In this case, age equivalence arose in FOK resolution except at the lowest levels of recognition in the single-presentation condition. The use of effective strategies during encoding correlated with memory performance and FOKs, even for unrecalled pairs. These results are inconsistent with an inferential-deficit explanation of age deficits in FOK resolution; they point to the importance of original encoding quality as a potent contributor to FOK resolution, and they argue for equating age groups on memory performance when evaluating the episodic FOK resolution of age differences.     

A mathematical analysis of a natural class of partitions of a graph

Any finite graph (nondirected, no loops) can be coupled with its complementary graph producing what we term a completed graph. This paper studies completed graphs in the context of a structural concept called stratification that is motivated by theoretical work in social psychology and sociology. A completed graph is stratified in case its node (vertex) set can be divided into two nonempty subsets with exactly one of the two types of ties holding between every pair of nodes from distinct sets. A completed graph is totally stratified in case every one of its nontrivial completed subgraphs is stratified. The first part of the paper relates the concept of stratification to the familiar graph property of connectedness. In particular, a completed graph is totally stratified if and only if it does not have a four point completed subgraph that is connected in both the original graph relation and its complementary relation. Using the concept of stratification, completed graphs can be decomposed uniquely into taxonomic structures, that is, nested sets of partitions. An algorithm for the decomposition based on the work with the concept of stratification is developed. The relationship between the notion of stratification and the ideas in balance theory is examined, and stratification is viewed as a generalization of Davis' notion of clustering. It turns out that the concepts of clique, status, and structural equivalence used throughout the social networks literature can be defined in an interesting way for completed graphs. Cliques are sets of nodes with similar internal links and statuses are sets of nodes with similar external links. Structurally equivalent sets are both cliques and statuses. The concepts of status and structural equivalence are closely related to the decomposition algorithm. In particular, for any totally stratified completed graph, the set of all statuses and the set of all maximal structurally equivalent sets can be generated by mathematical operations performed on the taxonomic decomposition of the completed graph. Finally some of our resuls are informally related to the blockmodeling approach to analyzing social network data discussed in several previous Journal of Mathematical Psychology articles.     

Are you sure you forgot? Feeling of knowing in directed forgetting.

One significant issue in metamemory is how variables increasing memorability affect metamemory. Previous research has produced inconsistent results. The effect of directed forgetting on the magnitude and accuracy of feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments was investigated. Participants were presented with word pairs, some to be remembered and some to be forgotten, and then were asked to recall all target words regardless of initial instructions. For unrecalled items, they were asked to give FOK judgments about performance in a future memory task: a cued stem-completion task (Experiment 1) or a recognition test (Experiment 2). This encoding manipulation increased both the memory performance and the magnitude of FOK judgments. However, no such effect on the accuracy of FOK judgments was observed.     

线索熟悉性与易接近性对FOK影响的实验研究

本研究目的探讨线索熟悉性和易接近性与FOK判断的关系。两个实验以中文词为材料．采用重复启动操纵线索的熟悉性,用联想集大小操纵易接近性,线索词和目标词之间无联想关系。实验结果表明：线索熟悉性和易接近性都有促进FOK判断的作用,但二者对FOK的作用是独立的,且不同步。文章最后讨论了线索熟悉性与易接近性的控制条件可能影响二者在FOK判断上的关系。     

Both perceptual and conceptual factors influence taste-odor and taste-taste interactions

Observers are often asked to make intensity judgments for a sensory attribute of a stimulus that is embedded in a background of “irrelevant” stimulusdimensions. Under some circumstances, these background dimensions of the stimulus can influence intensity judgments for the target attribute. For example, judgments of sweetness can be influenced by the other taste or-odor qualities of a solution (Frank & Byram, 1988; Kamen et al., 1961). Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the influence of stimulus context, instructional set, and reference stimuli on cross-quality interactions in mixtures of chemosensory stimuli. Experiment 1 demonstrated that odor-induced changes in sweetness judgments were dramatically influenced when subjects rated multiple attributes of the stimulus as compared with when they judged sweetness alone. Several odorants enhanced sweetness when sweetness alone was judged, while sweetness was suppressed for these same stimuli when total-intensity ratings were broken down into ratings for the sweetness, saltiness, sourness, bitterness, and fruitiness of each solution. Experiment 2 demonstrated a similar pattern of results when bitterness was the target taste. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that the instructional effects applied to both taste-odorand taste-taste mixtures. It was concluded that the taste enhancement and suppression observed for taste-odor and taste-taste mixtures are influenced by (1) instructional sets which influence subjects’ concepts of attribute categories, and (2) the perceptual similarities among the quality dimensions of the stimulus.     

Rewarded remembering: dissociations between self-rated motivation and memory performance

People often claim that they perform better in memory performance tasks when they are more motivated. However, past research has shown minimal effects of motivation on memory performance when factors contributing to item-specific biases during encoding and retrieval are taken into account. The purpose of the present study was to examine the generality of this apparent dissociation by using more sensitive measures of experienced motivation and memory performance. Extrinsic motivation was manipulated through competition instructions, and subjective ratings of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were obtained before and after study instructions. Participants studied a series of words, and memory performance was assessed by content recall (Experiment 1) and source recall (Experiment 2). Both experiments showed dissociation between subjective ratings of extrinsic motivation and actual memory performance, so that competition increased self-rated extrinsic motivation but had no effects on memory performance, including source recall. Inconsistent with most people's expectations, the findings suggest that extrinsic motivation has minimal effects on memory performance.