Recognition instructions and recognition practice can alter the confidence–response time relationship.

Three face-recognition experiments examined how instructions for a recognition test (e.g., emphasize speed or emphasize accuracy) can impact the confidence–response time relationship for episodic memory reports. In all 3 experiments, the confidence–response time correlation was smaller when participants were told to speed up their responding rate, which suggests that participants in these conditions relied less on the artificially compressed response times in forming their confidence judgments than they would under "normal" circumstances. Also, recognition practice before the final memory test eliminated the effect of the recognition instruction manipulation. These results support J. S. Shaw's (1996) suggestion that witnesses rely in part on the fluency of their memory reports when generating confidence judgments, and these findings have important implications for understanding the relationships among witness confidence, accuracy, and response time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recollection-based prospective metamemory judgments are more accurate than those based on confidence: Judgments of remembering and knowing (JORKS).

Five experiments were conducted to examine whether the nature of the information that is monitored during prospective metamemory judgments affected the relative accuracy of those judgments. We compared item-by-item judgments of learning (JOLs), which involved participants determining how confident they were that they would remember studied items, with judgments of remembering and knowing (JORKs), which involved participants determining whether studied items would later be accompanied by contextual details (i.e., remembering) or would not (i.e., knowing). JORKs were more accurate than JOLs when remember–know or confidence judgments were made at test and when cued recall was the outcome measure, but not for yes–no recognition. We conclude that the accuracy of metamemory judgments depends on the nature of the information monitored during study and test and that metamemory monitoring can be improved if participants are asked to base their judgments on contextual details rather than on confidence. These data support the contention that metamemory decisions can be based on qualitatively distinct cues, rather than an overall memory strength signal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The realism in older people's confidence judgments of answers to general knowledge questions.

The study investigated 2 aspects of the accuracy (i.e., realism) of confidence judgments of persons age 60–93 years (N = 1,384) regarding their answers to general knowledge questions. These aspects are the level of confidence (calibration) in relation to the proportion of correct answers and the ability to discriminate between correct and incorrect answers by means of confidence judgments. No age differences were found for either of the 2 aspects. Gender differences were found for proportion of correct answers and confidence but not for the realism in the confidence judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metamemory judgments and the benefits of repeated study: Improving recall predictions through the activation of appropriate knowledge.

Correspondence between judgments of learning (JOLs) and actual recall tends to be poor when the same items are studied and recalled multiple times (e.g., A. Koriat, L. Sheffer, & H. Ma’ayan, 2002). The authors investigated whether making relevant metamemory knowledge more salient would improve the association between actual and predicted recall as a function of repeated exposure to the same study list. In 2 experiments, participants completed 4 study–recall phases involving the same list of items. In addition to having participants make item-by-item JOLs during each study phase, after the 1st study–recall phase participants also generated change-in-recall estimates as to how many more or fewer words they would recall given another exposure to the same study list. This estimation procedure was designed to highlight repeated study as a factor that can contribute to recall performance. Activating metamemory knowledge about the benefits of repeated study for recall in this way allowed participants to accurately express this knowledge in a free-recall context (Experiment 2), but less so when the memory test was cued recall (Experiment 1). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual specificity and implicit auditory priming in older and younger adults.

Age differences in perceptual specificity for implicit auditory priming were examined in 3 experiments. All 3 experiments began with a study phase during which participants rated words based on perceptual (shallow encoding) or semantic (deep encoding) attributes. After the study phase, participants were asked to identify filtered versions of repeated and new words (implicit test) and then to make old/new recognition judgments (explicit test). In contrast to earlier findings (D. L. Schacter, B. Church, & D. M. Osowiecki, 1994), older and younger adults were equally sensitive to study-to-test changes in speaking rate (Experiment 1), fundamental frequency (Experiment 2), and voice (Experiment 3). Explicit memory, in contrast, was significantly poorer for older adults but was minimally affected by changes in surface features. Findings from the study are discussed with respect to their implications for establishing the mechanisms mediating perceptual specificity and for their importance in understanding age-related changes in implicit memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Culture, control, and perception of relationships in the environment.

East Asian cognition has been held to be relatively holistic; that is, attention is paid to the field as a whole. Western cognition, in contrast, has been held to be object focused and control oriented. In this study East Asians (mostly Chinese) and Americans were compared on detection of covariation and field dependence. The results showed the following: (a) Chinese participants reported stronger association between events, were more responsive to differences in covariation, and were more confident about their covariation judgments; (b) these cultural differences disappeared when participants believed they had some control over the covariation judgment task; (c) American participants made fewer mistakes on the Rod-and-Frame Test, indicating that they were less field dependent; (d) American performance and confidence, but not that of Asians, increased when participants were given manual control of the test. Possible origins of the perceptual differences are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overconfidence effects in category learning: A comparison of connectionist and exemplar memory models.

Exemplar and connectionist models were compared on their ability to predict overconfidence effects in category learning data. In the standard task, participants learned to classify hypothetical patients with particular symptom patterns into disease categories and reported confidence judgments in the form of probabilities. The connectionist model asserts that classifications and confidence are based on the strength of learned associations between symptoms and diseases. The exemplar retrieval model (ERM) proposes that people learn by storing examples and that their judgments are often based on the first example they happen to retrieve. Experiments 1 and 2 established that overconfidence increases when the classification step of the process is bypassed. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that a direct instruction to retrieve many exemplars reduces overconfidence. Only the ERM predicted the major qualitative phenomena exhibited in these experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response Reversals in Recognition Memory.

Using a dynamic sequential sampling model and a recently proposed model for confidence judgments in recognition memory (T. Van Zandt, 2000b), the authors examine the tendency for rememberers to reverse their responses after a primary decision. In 4 experiments, speeded "old"-"new" decisions were made under bias followed by a 2nd response', either a confidence judgment or another simple choice. The data from these experiments showed that participants know when they have made a mistake and that they respond to this knowledge by reversing their responses. Response reversals are thus shown to be important for constructing models of the response-selection process in recognition memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of strategies for reducing interval overconfidence in group judgments.

The present experiments examined several strategies designed to reduce interval overconfidence in group judgments. Results consistently indicated that 3–4 person nominal groups (whose members made independent judgments and later combined the highest and lowest of these estimates into a single confidence interval) were better calibrated than individual judges and interactive groups. This pattern held even when participants were directly instructed to expand their interval estimates, or when interactive groups appointed a devil's advocate or explicitly considered reasons why their interval estimates might be too narrow. Interactive groups did not perform substantially better than individuals, although participants frequently had the impression that group judgments were far superior to individual judgments. This misperception resembles the "illusion of group effectivity" found in brainstorming research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spacing One's Study: Evidence for a Metacognitive Control Strategy.

This article investigated individual control of spacing strategies during study. Three predictions were outlined: The spacing hypothesis suggests that people choose to space their study to improve long-term learning via the spacing effect. The massing hypothesis suggests that people choose to mass their study because of illusions of confidence during study. The metacognitive hypothesis suggests that people control their spacing schedules as a function of their metacognitive judgments of specific to-be-learned items. To test these hypotheses, the authors asked participants to study and make judgments of learning for cue-target pairs. Then, participants were given three choices; they could study the pair again immediately (massed), study the pair again after the entire list had been presented (spaced), or choose not to restudy (done). Results supported a metacognitively controlled spacing strategy-people spaced items that were judged to be relatively easy but massed items that were judged as relatively difficult. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How people make support judgments: Individual differences in the traits used to infer supportiveness in others.

Social support and other social judgments are composed of several distinct components, of which relationship effects are an important part. With regard to support judgments, relationship effects refer to the fact that when judging the same targets, people differ systematicatly in whom they see as supportive. One explanation for this effect is that people differ in how they combine information about targets to judge supportiveness. Participants rated the supportiveness of hypothetical targets and targets from their own social networks. Multilevel modeling identified the traits participants used to make support judgments. There were significant differences in the extent to which participants used different target personality traits to judge supportiveness. In addition, participant neuroticism predicted the extent to which participants used target neuroticism and agreeableness to judge supportiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metacognitive and control strategies in study-time allocation.

This article investigates how people's metacognitive judgments influence subsequent study-time-allocation strategies. The authors present a comprehensive literature review indicating that people allocate more study-time to judged-difficult than to judged-easy items—consistent with extant models of study-time allocation. However, typically, the materials were short, and participants had ample time for study. In contrast, in Experiment 1, when participants had insufficient time to study, they allocated more time to the judged-easy items than to the judged-difficult items, especially when expecting a test. In Experiment 2, when the materials were shorter, people allocated more study-time to the judged-difficult materials. In Experiment 3, under high time pressure, people preferred studying judged-easy sonnets; under moderate time pressure, they showed no preference. These results provide new evidence against extant theories of study-time allocation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"They saw a negotiation": Partisanship and involvement.

The incompatibility error is the belief that the other party's interests are completely opposed to one's own in a negotiation situation, when in fact, the other party's interests are completely compatible with one's own. In Experiment 1, partisan and nonpartisan observers viewed a negotiation. Nonpartisan observers were more likely to detect compatible interests than the actual negotiators. In Experiment 2, high involvement worsened judgment accuracy among partisan observers but improved judgment accuracy among nonpartisan observers. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of Experiment 2: Nonpartisan observers made more accurate judgments when they were accountable than when they were not accountable; however, partisan observers made less accurate judgments when they were accountable than when they were not accountable. Partisans who were not accountable expressed the most confidence in their judgments. Partisans tended to judge their party to be more friendly than the other party; nonpartisans were more evenhanded in their judgments. There were no differences in recall of the videotaped interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feeling of knowing in episodic memory following moderate to severe closed-head injury.

The ability to accurately monitor one's memory is a metacognitive process that is important in everyday life. The authors examined episodic memory feeling-of-knowing (FOK) ratings in 21 moderate to severe closed-head injury (CHI) participants (more than 1 year postinjury) and 21 controls. Participants studied 36 critical cue-target word pairs. Following a brief delay, they were asked to recall the target that corresponded to a given cue. Confidence ratings were made for recalled words, and FOK judgments were made for nonrecalled words in terms of the likelihood of recognizing the target word on a subsequent recognition test. CHI participants demonstrated less accurate recall but accurate ability to judge their recall performance (retrospective memory monitoring). They also demonstrated intact FOK judgments when providing binary judgments but demonstrated difficulties making finer discriminations on an ordinal scale (prospective memory monitoring). These findings suggest that memory monitoring is not a unitary construct. It is proposed that CHI participants may display intact memory monitoring when predictions are based on familiarity assessment but not when continued probing for additional episodic information is required. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Confidence in Individual and Group Decision Making: When "Two Heads" Are Worse Than One.

The authors investigated students' accuracy and confidence judgments for course-related material in college classrooms. Under conditions of group work and instructor feedback, students produced higher exam accuracy scores working in groups than alone but at a cost of increased confidence for groups' wrong answers. Groups' high confidence for wrong answers generated the case when "two heads are worse than one." Students participating in groups that arrived at wrong exam answers gave higher confidence when wrong and lower confidence when correct for repeated items on a final exam. "Two heads" groups when wrong had no adverse effect on students' accuracy for repeated exam items. An intervention of lecture and readings on confidence calibration, metamemory, and overconfidence did not improve the students' accuracy-confidence judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unconscious knowledge of artificial grammars is applied strategically.

The criteria by which incidentally acquired knowledge of an artificial grammar (A. S. Reber, 1967) could be unconscious was explored in 5 experiments. Participants trained on an artificial grammar lacked metaknowledge of their knowledge: Participants classified substantially above chance even when they believed that they were literally guessing, and, under some conditions, participants' confidence in incorrect decisions was just as great as their confidence in correct decisions. However, participants had a large degree of strategic control over their knowledge: Participants trained on 2 grammars could decide which grammar to apply in a test phase, and there was no detectable tendency for participants to apply the other grammar. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Testing architectures of the decision–confidence relation.

Two experiments examined the effect of rendering confidence judgments on the properties of the comparative decision process. In Exp 1, participants worked for 12 sessions that required 2-alternative perceptual, line-length comparisons. For sessions 1–4 and sessions 9–12, confidence judgments were not required. For sessions 5–8, participants provided confidence reports following each comparative judgment. The requirement of confidence judgments significantly increased decisional response time, suggesting that some confidence processing occurs in parallel with the primary decision process. Concomitantly, an examination of the properties of the time to determine confidence during sessions 5–8 revealed clear evidence of postdecisional confidence processing. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment requiring 2 alternative comparative judgments of Canadian city populations. The authors conclude that confidence processing occurs both during the decision process and postdecisionally, and discuss the implications of the present findings for current theories of confidence in human judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Highly confident but wrong: Gender differences and similarities in confidence judgments.

Although gender differences are fairly consistent when people report their general confidence, much less is known about such differences when individuals assess the degree of confidence they have in their ability to answer any particular test question. The objective of this research was to investigate gender differences in item-specific confidence judgments. Data were collected from 3 psychology courses containing 70 men and 181 women. After answering each item on course exams, students indicated their confidence that their answer to that item was correct. Results showed that gender differences in confidence are dependent on the context (whether items were correct or wrong) and on the domain being tested. Moreover, although both men and women were overconfident, undergraduate men were especially overconfident when incorrect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition of Interlingual Homophones in Bilingual Auditory Word Recognition.

How do bilinguals recognize interlingual homophones? In a gating study, word identification and language membership decisions by Dutch-English bilinguals were delayed for interlingual homophones relative to monolingual controls. At the same time, participant judgments were sensitive to subphonemic cues. These findings suggest that auditory lexical access is language nonselective but is sensitive to language-specific characteristics of the input. In 2 cross-modal priming experiments, visual lexical decision times were shortest for monolingual controls preceded by their auditory equivalents. Response times to interlingual homophones accompanied by their corresponding auditory English or Dutch counterparts were also shorter than in unrelated conditions. However, they were longer than in the related monolingual control conditions, providing evidence for online competition of the 2 near-homophonic representations. Experiment 3 suggested that participants used sublexical cues to differentiate the 2 versions of a homophone after language nonselective access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)