Metacognition

Question 1

What is metacognition?

Answer 1

• Processes involved in monitoring and controlling performance on a task
• an awareness of one’s own thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them.
• How a human adapts memory performance using the things they know about their memory

Question 2

Why study metacognition?

Answer 2

• Traditional experimental memory paradigms don’t capture this aspect of cognition
• Early studies looked at the amount they could recall not the way in which they did it
• Traditional memory paradigms don’t reflect the operation of memory in real world environments
• What we learn could be used to improve many decisions based on information accessed from memory

Question 3

what are the 2 key assumptions the meta-cognitive approach is based on

Answer 3

1. humans have the ability to monitor their own cognitive experience
2. This subjective experience that arises from monitoring plays a causal role in determining current and future cognitive operations

Question 4

how does monitoring and control work (object level and meta-level)
examples

Answer 4

object level > meta level = monitoring- we monitor our subjective experience of feeling
e.g. check you understand what you are reading

meta level > object level = control- determines current and future cognitive operations (how long you might continue thinking about it for
e.g. re-reading a paragraph

Question 5

what is monitoring, how is it measured

Answer 5

• Processes that allow us to observe and reflect on our cognition
• Monitoring means the ability to judge successfully one’s own cognitive processes, and control means the ability to use those judgments to alter behaviour
• Measured by asking people to report their own monitoring

Question 6

what are 4 measures of monitoring?

Answer 6

1. ease of learning
2. judgment of knowing
3. feeling of knowing
4. confidence

Question 7

ease of learning?

Answer 7

before you learn each item, how difficult will it be for you to learn it

Question 8

judgment of learning?

Answer 8

for each of the items you have learned, how likely is it you will be able to recall them later

Question 9

feeling of knowing

Answer 9

tip of tongue state
For items that you are not able to recall, how likely is it that you would recognise the item from among a set of possible items?

Question 10

confidence?

Answer 10

• For items that you recall/recognise, how likely is it that your decision is correct?

Question 11

what is control

Answer 11

• Conscious and non-conscious decisions we make based on the output of our monitoring processes
• Revealed by behaviours (measurement of what people do)

Question 12

name measures of control

Answer 12

• Self-paced study time (measure how long someone looks at stimulus for)
• Response time (recognition and recall)
• Quantity of information reported (things they say)
• Veridicality/ correspondence of information reported e.g. an item could say a person wears a red jumper, how does this correspond with original item shown
• Grain-size of information reported (how detailed a report is, we can ask people to bet on how wrong/right they think they are)
• Many of them are verbal

Question 13

Example of metacognition in action: studying for exams

Answer 13

• You have to decide when you have learned enough
• You could measure:
> Monitoring: judgements of learning
> Control: amount of time spent studying each item

Question 14

what did hart (1965) look at

Answer 14

looked at feeling of knowing judgements predict performance on recognition test

Question 15

what did Underwood (1966) look at

Answer 15

looked at whether ease of learning judgements predicted recall performance

Question 16

what paradigm Hart’s (1965) study use

what type of questions were did participants answer

Answer 16

• Recall-judgement-recognition paradigm was used
• The focus on general knowledge questions (semantic memory) NOT episodic
• Participants answered 50 or 75 general knowledge questions e.g. what is the capital of Japan?
• Participant fails to recall the answer- how likely will you be able to recognise the answer if we present you with a set of possible answers?
> Either gave Yes/no or ratings on a scale of 1-6 (wouldn’t recognise, through to would recognise it)
> Multiple-choice recognition of all items e.g. a) Kyoto, b) Tokyo, etc

Question 17

what were the findings from Hart’s (1965) study

what does this tell us about people’s metacognitive knowledge?

Answer 17

When they were correct, more likely to say they knew the answer (felt they knew)
> There is quite a lot of variability across participants
> FOK=items participants felt they would not know, percentages were lower
> M=.66 vs. .38
> Some people have good metacognitive knowledge, and some people don’t

Question 18

what were the findings from Hart’s (1965) study

what does this tell us about people’s metacognitive knowledge?

Answer 18

For items they would know the items, they had higher correct recalls
For items they would not know or recognise them, they had fewer percentage of items they got correct
> There is quite a lot of variability across participants
> FOK=items participants felt they would not know, percentages were lower
> M=.66 vs. .38
> Some people have good metacognitive knowledge, and some people don’t

Question 19

what did Underwood’s (1966)- ease of learning judgements (EOL) study comprise of
what paradigm was used
what did participants do
what were the 2 conditions

Answer 19

• Paradigm in this experiment involved 27 “triagram” (3 letters), easy -> difficult: BUG, CES, XFH
• Participants judged the speed with which they would learn each trigram
• Surprise recall test and Intentional learning conditions: over 6 study-recall blocks

Question 20

what were the results of Underwood’s (1966)- ease of learning judgements (EOL) study?

Answer 20

• Key question: Do judgements predict recall performance? Answer is yes, not too badly
• Correlation between average ‘speed of learning’ judgements and accuracy
• Surprise recall r=.77
• Intentional recall r=.91 (when people knew they would have to recall the information)
• Some people had really strong correlation, some had poor correlation
• Reasonable correlations for individuals too (mean r of .48), but some individual differences
• Metacognitive judgements are of intermediate accuracy (above chance but far from perfect)

Question 21

what is the direct access view, implication of this?

Answer 21

• Judgements are made on the basis of features of the target that can be accessed or retrieved
> E.g. people access some notion of memory strength for a learned item
> E.g. Hart (1965-67): for a non-recalled item, a memory monitoring process ascertains whether the item is stored -> FOK

Implication: weakly stored information should not be predicted to be more recallable than more strongly stored information

Question 22

what is the inferential view, describe what inferences may be

Answer 22

• Judgements are based on a host of cues and clues generated from 2 sources:
1. Generated by act of learning or remembering
2. From knowledge-specific info about own memory
Inferences may be:
> Largely non-conscious, revealed as a “feeling” or
> Based on a theory about what makes information memorable
• E.g. ease of retrieval: amount of information retrieved

Question 23

what is the hybrid view and what 2 cues does it consist of

Answer 23

Koriat said metacognitive judgements are based on experienced based cues and information based cues

Question 24

what are experienced based cues

Answer 24

• Sheer feeling arising from some aspect of remembering, learning or failing to remember
> Interpretation of what that means
> E.g. looking at a photo of someone famous but cannot recall their name
> Tip of the tongue is an example of experienced based cue

Question 25

what are information based cues

Answer 25

• Our knowledge of our own memory
• A- priori theories (knowledge that is acquired independently of any particular experience) and analytical inferences about the impact of various factors on memory e.g.:
> The longer a stimulus is present for, the more likely I will later remember it
> The longer the delay between learning and test, the worse I do on the test
> The more I practice an item, the more likely I’ll remember it

Question 26

what does memory allow us to do

Answer 26

• navigate our way around places we’ve never been before
• communicate effectively because we’ve developed language based on memory
• memory not based on HOW MUCh we remember BUT on WHAT we remember and verticality of those memories

Question 27

what is a list learning paradigm

Answer 27

> it looks at memory performance through measuring the percentage of items recalled/recognised
memory is measured in terms of its effectiveness by the percentage of items recalled and NOT by what is recalled
Koriat and Goldsmith highlight behind this list learning paradigm is a metaphor for what memory is

Question 28

what is the storehouse metaphor

Answer 28

• memory is the storehouse of info that we can later access and retrieve
• A lot of the theories in this area use language such as a memory trace, memory vector or memory item
• Forgetting under this paradigm is thought of as a loss of elements, so we lose items from memory under this paradigm

Question 29

what are 2 traditional approaches to memory

Answer 29

1. list learning paradigm

2. storehouse metaphor

Question 30

correspondence approach to memory: every day memory research/what is it exemplified in

Answer 30

correspondence between what is inside our head and what we ACTUALLY perceive in the world

• exemplified in eye-witness research
• show people a video, ask them to recall it to best of ability
• interested in correspondence of what they report and they originally saw

Question 31

what is the correspondence metaphor (accuracy oriented)

Answer 31

• Memory is about the past event
• Focus is on the accuracy of the report
• Memory is assessed as an output bound manner rather than an input bound manner
• Forgetting is a loss of correspondence

Question 32

how do we measure correspondence

Answer 32

You could calculate the accuracy by dividing the number of correct words by the total number of words that they were shown
OR
you could look at their accuracy by dividing the total number of correct words they produced by just the numbers that were produced so you’re not taking account of blanks left

Question 33

which approach to measuring correspondence results in higher accuracy and why

Answer 33

total words correct and total words produced (doesn’t account for blank words) produces higher accuracy
as we’re not actually saying they were wrong when they failed to reproduce a couple of items (accuracy=8/12=66% vs. accuracy =8/10=80%)
this approach is more important for real world memory

Question 34

compare how items would be measured under storehouse metaphor and correspondence metaphor

Answer 34

• If a person fails to remember the word “mill” and left it blank, they haven’t actually reproduced anything
- In the storehouse metaphor for memory you would say that its wrong
- In a correspondence, you would leave that blank and wouldn’t count that at all and just leave it out
• For the studied word “show”, the word “point” was reproduced
- In the storehouse metaphor and correspondence metaphor this is considered as wrong because it does not correspond with the original word
• For the studied word “plant”, nothing is reported
- For storehouse metaphor this is wrong
- For correspondence, it is left blank
• Hence, it is apparent there is a difference in the way that we’re counting under different metaphors

Question 35

what is the recall-recognition paradox?

Answer 35

when you get two different types of results depending on the metaphor for memory that you use
Namely, the people were forced to produce items from memory in the lab-based studies but they were given free report option in the eye witness or more real world studies
> people were able to not report things and could leave items blank if they wanted to
> Finally, there was a difference in the format that was used
> They argued that there was not really a paradox and that it just came down to methodology and the way things were measured

Question 36

Why does the recall recognition paradigm occur?

3 things

Answer 36

Memory property under consideration
> accuracy versus quantity

Report option
> forced versus free

Test format
> recall versus recognition

Question 37

what did koriat and goldsmith find in their study