Cognition, 8e

Chapter 6

Metacognition

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

metacognition • your knowledge and control of your cognitive processes • supervises the way you select and use your memory strategies • includes self-knowledge, metamemory, metacomprehension

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Factors that Influence People's Metamemory Accuracy

Metamemory: Estimating the Accuracy for Total Score Versus the Accuracy for Individual Items

• In general, people tend to be overconfident if you ask them to predict their

total score

memory test. on a

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Factors that Influence People's Metamemory Accuracy

Metamemory: Estimating the Accuracy for Total Score Versus the Accuracy for Individual Items

• In contrast, people tend to be accurate if you ask them to predict which

individual items

they will remember and which ones they will forget.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Factors that Influence People's Metamemory Accuracy

Metamemory: Estimating the Accuracy for Total Score Versus the Accuracy for Individual Items

foresight bias —when people overestimate the number of answers that they will supply on a future test Studying with the correct responses visible can lead to overly optimistic estimates.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Factors that Influence People's Metamemory Accuracy

Metamemory: Estimating the Accuracy for Total Score Versus the Accuracy for Individual Items

Dunning and coauthors (2003) • estimate of total score

after

finishing exam • less competent students overestimated performance

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Factors that Influence People's Metamemory Accuracy

Metamemory: Estimating the Score Immediately Versus After a Delay

• People do not provide accurate memory estimates for individual items, if they make these estimates immediately after learning the items.

• In contrast—if they delay their judgments— they are reasonably accurate in predicting which items they will recall.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory About Factors Affecting Memory Accuracy

Many students lack knowledge of memory strategies.

"All memory strategies are not created equal." Students may believe that some factors do have an effect on memory, although these factors actually

do not

have an effect.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Regulation of Study Strategies

• coordinate memory and decision making • remember to spend more time on difficult material

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Regulation of Study Strategies

Allocating Time When the Task is Easy

Nelson and Leonesio (1988) • examined how students distribute their study time when they can study at their own pace • Students allocated more study time for the items that they believed would be difficult to master.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Regulation of Study Strategies

Allocating Time When the Task is Easy

Nelson and Leonesio (1988)

(continued)

• Students spend longer than necessary studying items they already know, and not enough time studying the items they have not yet mastered.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Regulation of Study Strategies

Allocating Time When the Task is Easy

Son and Metcalfe (2000) —Students spend more time on difficult items in studies examining relatively easy material like learning pairs of words.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Regulation of Study Strategies

Allocating Time When the Task is Difficult

Son and Metcalfe (2000) • test material—a series of eight encyclopedia-style biographies • time pressure—only 30 minutes to study • rank the biographies in terms of difficulty

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Regulation of Study Strategies

Allocating Time When the Task is Difficult

Son and Metcalfe (2000)

(continued)

• Students spent the majority of their study time on the biographies they considered easy, rather than those they considered difficult.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Regulation of Study Strategies

Allocating Time When the Task is Difficult

Other studies also indicated that when facing time pressure, students choose to study material that seems relatively easy to master.

Experts concentrate their time on more challenging material, compared to novices.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Likelihood of Remembering a Specific Target

1. The tip-of-the-tongue effect —subjective experience of knowing the target word for which you are searching, but cannot recall it right now; generally an involuntary effect 2. The feeling-of-knowing effect —subjective experience of knowing some information, but cannot recall it right now; more conscious experience

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Likelihood of Remembering a Specific Target

The Tip-of-the-Tongue Effect

Brown and McNeill (1966)

(continued)

• Similar sounding words did indeed resemble the target words in terms of first letter and/or other attributes like number of syllables.

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Likelihood of Remembering a Specific Target

The Tip-of-the-Tongue Effect

Later Research • often accompanied by nonverbal behaviors (e.g., exaggerated facial expression, foot movements); an example of embodied cognition (thoughts expressed as motor behavior)

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metamemory and the Likelihood of Remembering a Specific Target

The Feeling-of-Knowing Effect

• predicting whether you could correctly recognize the correct answer to a question • related to the amount of partial information retrieved

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metacomprehension

metacomprehension —thoughts about language comprehension

Metacomprehension Accuracy

College students • are not very accurate in metacomprehension skills • may not notice inconsistencies or missing information in a passage

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metacomprehension

Metacomprehension Accuracy

College students • believe they have understood something because they are familiar with its general topic • fail to retain specific information • overestimate how they will perform when tested

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metacomprehension

Metacomprehension Accuracy

Pressley and Ghatala (1988) • reading comprehension using SAT; essay followed by multiple-choice questions • students rated how certain they were that they had answered each question correctly • little difference between estimates on correct and incorrect items

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6

Metacognition

Metacomprehension

Metacomprehension Accuracy

Pressley and Ghatala (1988) • students believed that they understood the material, even when they answered the questions incorrectly

Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin Chapter 6