Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2024-08-25
Abstract： Judgments of learning (JOLs) refer to learners’ predictive evaluations of the likelihood that they will successfully remember a given item in a future test. Previous studies have primarily focused on examining the accuracy of JOLs and elucidating the mechanisms underlying JOL formation. However, recent studies suggest that the act of making JOLs can alter memory itself, a phenomenon known asthe reactivity effect. Typically, participants made a JOL after learning each item. This metamemory monitoring process may heighten individuals’ metacognitive awareness of their memory compared to conditions without JOLs, thereby triggering the reactivity effect. Zhao et al. (2023) further differentiated the reactivity effects of JOLs on item-specific memory and inter-item relational memory. They found that making JOLs can enhance item-specific memory but concurrently weaken inter-item relational memory (e.g., memory for serial order or semantic relational information). A potential explanation for this is the item-specific and relational account, which posits that making JOLs enhances encoding of item-specific details, resulting in a positive reactivity effect. However, because cognitive resources are limited, allocating more cognitive resources to processing item-specific details reduces resources available for processing inter-item relations, leading to a negative reactivity effect on inter-item relational memory. The current study employed on the DRM paradigm to investigate the reactivity effect on false memory and to test the item-specific and relational account.
Experiment 1 explored the reactivity effects of JOLs on false and veridical memory. Sixty-four participants learned DRM word lists, each containing 11 DRM study words and 1 critical lure. Critical lures were withheld during the learning phase and presented only during the recognition test. Half of the DRM word lists were studied under the JOL condition, and the remaining half were learned under the no-JOL condition. Participants were instructed to learn each DRM word individually. The key distinction between the JOL and no-JOL conditions was that, in the former, participants completed item-by-item JOLs while learning each word. After the learning task, participants completed a distractor task, followed by a recognition test. The results showed that item-by-item JOLs disrupted semantic processing among DRM words and decreased false memory (i.e., false alarm rates for critical lures). Concurrently, item-by-item JOLs facilitated item-specific processing, yielding a positive reactivity effect on memory for studied words.
Experiments 2 and 3 changed presentation format of DRM lists and asked participants to make global JOLs for a whole word list, rather than for each word, to examine the reactivity effect on both intra- and inter-item relational memory. Experiment 2 used pure DRM lists, with six words from the same thematic word lists presented together. Experiment 3 employed mixed DRM lists, with each list containing six study words from different thematic word lists but with shared thematic relationships across lists. In the no-JOL condition, DRM words were not presented individually. Instead, pure (Experiment 2) or mixed word lists (Experiment 3) were simultaneously displayed on screen for a 12 s study duration per list. Participants in both experiments provided global JOLs for each list, predicting the number of words they would remember in the subsequent test. The results showed that making global JOLs facilitated processing of intra-item semantic relations but disrupted processing of inter-item semantic relations.
In summary, the current study revealed that item-by-item JOLs disrupt semantic relational processing among individual DRM words, reducing false memory but promoting processing of item-specific information, thereby facilitating recognition of studied words. Additionally, global JOLs enhance intra-item semantic relational processing but impair inter-item semantic relational processing. The results support the item-specific and relational account and elucidate the cognitive mechanisms underlying the reactivity effect. Moreover, these findings offer valuable insights into the development of effective interventions for mitigating false memory.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2024-07-09
Abstract： Soliciting judgments of Learning (JOLs) during learning of word lists can reactively alter memory performance, a phenomenon referred to as the reactivity effect. This reactivity effect can be explained by the fact that participants improve their learning engagement or that they alter their learning strategies when they are required to make JOLs. Previous studies have leveraged the learning transfer paradigm to testify these theories. However, this paradigm does not exclude the possibility of a gradual fading of the utilization of effective learning strategies. To mitigate the problems associated with the learning transfer paradigm, an interleaved JOLs paradigm was developed and employed here. The first aim of the current study was to use the interleaved JOL paradigm to testify the strategy change and enhanced engagement theories. The second aim was directly test the enhanced engagement theory, which has not yet been justified by previous research. Experiment 1 recruited two groups of participants, both tasked with learning word lists and completing a recognition test. Participants in the control group did not make JOLs during the study phase, while the experimental group made JOLs to half of the words. The transferability of the reactivity effect was assessed based on the comparison between test performance of No-JOL words in the experimental group and the control group. Experiments 2-4 employed the production task, the spacing learning task, and the saving-time paradigm to modulate the level of learning engagement during the study phase, for the aim of exploring the moderation effect of learning engagement on the reactivity effect. Experiment 1 found that making JOLs reactively enhanced recognition performance of JOL words, reflecting a positive reactivity effect. There was little difference in recognition performance between the No-JOL condition of the experimental group and the control group, suggesting that the positive reactivity effect is not transferable to No-JOL words. Experiments 2 and 3 found that the production effect and spacing effect significantly interacted with the reactivity effect; Experiment 4 found that enhancing learning motivation significantly reduced the reactivity effect. The current study revealed that the positive reactivity effect was little transferable and altering the learning engagement during the learning process could significantly modulate the positive reactivity effect. These results jointly support the enhanced engagement theory to account for the reactivity effect on recognition memory of word lists.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Insomnia has high incidence in modern society. The resting-state functional magnetic resonance (rs-fMRI) becomes one of the main imaging methods for the neuroimaging studies of insomnia, with its convenience and non-intrusive during data recording. Recent rs-fMRI studies showed that patients with insomnia had abnormalities in the prefrontal lobe, the temporal lobe, anterior cingulate gyrus and insula. Large-scale brain network is a brain structure that contains multiple brain regions and has relatively unique cognitive function. Based on the perspective of large-scale brain networks, patients with insomnia had abnormal activities and connectivities within the default network, the salience network, the cognitive control network and the negative affect network. More important, growing evidence presented an altered connectivities pattern among these four large-scale brain networks. Based on the symptoms, therapy, and the patterns of the large-scale brain networks, we proposed a "precision treatment" approach for insomnia. Future researches could integrate the big data with multimodal neuroimaging technology to verify the findings of rs-fMRI. Moreover, longitudinal and sequential design of insomnia can further benefit for the understanding of the neural mechanisms of insomnia.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Judgments of learning (JOLs) are characterised as metacognitive judgments regarding the likelihood that studied items can be successfully retrieved in a future memory test. Previous studies found that people employ different types of cues to inform their online JOLs. Some of these cues can guide JOLs to accurately reflect memory status but others cannot (and are even misleading in some situations). A widely studied cue for JOL formation is subjective processing experience (e.g., perceptual fluency) while completing a given task, which often confers metacognitive illusions. It has been found that people give higher JOLs to large than to small words, despite the fact that font size has minimal influence on retention, a phenomenon termed the font size effect on JOLs. A potential mechanism underlying the effect is perceptual fluency: Large words are perceived more fluently than small ones, and fluent processing experience of large words induces a feeling of knowing, which drives people to offer higher JOLs. The font size effect is important because it spotlights a dissociation between metacognitive judgments and memory itself. The current study aims to explore the influences of encoding strength on the font size effect, and to explore practical techniques to calibrate metacognitive illusions induced by perceptual fluency. Experiment 1 aimed to delineate the role of perceptual fluency in the font size effect. Twenty-six participants first completed a continuous identification (CID) task to measure the difference in perceptual fluency (indexed by response times; RTs) between large (70-pt) and small (9-pt) words, after which they attended a classic learning task. In the learning task, participants studied large and small words one-by-one, for 2 s each, and made item-by-item JOLs. Immediately following the learning task, they completed a distractor task, followed by a free recall test. The results showed that, in the CID task, participants responded much faster to large than to small words, indicating the natural difference in perceptual fluency between large and small words. In addition, perceptual fluency (i.e., RTs in the CID task) significantly correlated with JOLs, reflecting the fluency effect on JOLs. More importantly, perceptual fluency significantly mediated the font size effect on JOLs, supporting the claim that perceptual fluency is responsible for the font size effect.Experiment 2 manipulated study durations to investigate the influence of enhancing encoding strength (through prolonging study duration) on the font size effect. Specifically, three groups of participants studied each word for 2 s, 4 s, and 8 s, respectively, and made item-by-item JOLs. The results demonstrated that prolonging study duration correspondingly decreased the font size effect on JOLs. It is, however, worth highlighting that expanding study time cannot fully eliminate the font size effect because the results still showed a significant font size effect even when the study time was increased to 8 s.Experiment 3 was conducted to further investigate the effectiveness of enhancing encoding strength for calibration of the font size effect. A sentence-making group was instructed to encode each word by generating a sentence to deepen the level of processing (i.e., encoding strength). By contrast, there were no explicit requirements of encoding strategies in the control group (i.e., participants in the control group could use any strategies they liked). In the control group, the classic font size effect on JOLs was successfully replicated; of critical interest, the effect disappeared in the sentence-making group. Such results reflect the power of improving encoding strength to calibrate metacognitive illusions induced by perceptual features.In summary, the current study establishes that perceptual fluency is at least one of the mechanisms underlying the font size effect on JOLs; prolonging study duration reduces but fails to eliminate the font size effect on JOLs; more importantly, directly deepening the level of processing through sentence-making is a valid strategy to calibrate metacognitive illusions induced by perceptual features. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in the main text.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-06-12
Abstract： "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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