Knowing what one knows and accurately monitoring one's own capacities and performance on a moment-to-moment basis are important determinants of task success. Individual differences in such metacognitive monitoring are well documented, but what determines an individual's monitoring accuracy in a particular context is yet to be fully understood. One…

Ongoing discussions on the nature of storage in visual working memory have mostly focused on 2 theoretical accounts: On one hand we have a discrete-state account, postulating that information in working memory is supported with high fidelity for a limited number of discrete items by a given number of "slots," with no information being…

Research has observed that monitoring one's own learning modifies memory for some materials but not for others. Specifically, making judgments of learning (JOLs) while learning word pairs improves subsequent cued-recall memory performance for related word pairs but not for unrelated word pairs. Theories that have attempted to explain this pattern…

Retrieval fluency can affect the metacognitive judgments people make about their memory. In a study by Benjamin, Bjork, and Schwartz (1998), participants predicted they would be better able to recall the answers to questions they retrieved more quickly than the answers to questions they retrieved more slowly, despite actual performance going in…

Previous studies have provided evidence that introspection about dual-task performance in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm is severely limited. The present study investigated introspection at the other pole of the multitasking continuum, namely task switching. In 2 experiments, participants provided estimates of their response…

When pristine testing conditions are used, an eyewitness's high-confidence identification from a lineup can be a reliable predictor of their identification accuracy (Wixted & Wells, 2017). Further, Grabman, Dobolyi, Berelovich, and Dodson (2019) found that high-confidence identifications are more predictive of accuracy for individuals with…

We assessed the effect of bilingualism on metacognitive processing in the artificial language learning task, in 2 experiments varying in the difficulty to segment the language. Following a study phase in which participants were exposed to the artificial language, segmentation performance was assessed by means of a dual forced-choice recognition…

We examined the effects of aging on performance in an item-recognition experiment with confidence judgments. A model for confidence judgments and response time (RTs; Ratcliff & Starns, 2013) was used to fit a large amount of data from a new sample of older adults and a previously reported sample of younger adults. This model of confidence…

The article reports 4 experiments that explore the notion of recognition without awareness using words as the material. Previous work by Voss and associates has shown that complex visual patterns were correctly selected as targets in a 2-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) recognition test although participants reported that they were guessing. The…

Research suggests that spaced learning, compared with massed learning, results in superior long-term retention (the spacing effect). Son (2010) identified a potentially important moderator of the spacing effect: metacognitive control. Specifically, when participants chose massed restudy but were instead forced to space the restudy, the spacing…

Prior research suggesting that longer bilingual experience benefits inhibitory control and monitoring has been criticized for a lack of control over confounding variables. We addressed this issue by using a propensity-score matching procedure that enabled us to match early and late bilinguals on 18 confounding variables--for example, demographic…

Situations in which the name of a person is perceived as familiar but does not trigger recall of pertinent semantic knowledge are common in daily life. In current connectionist models of person recognition, such "familiar-only" experiences reflect supra-threshold activation at person-identity nodes but subthreshold activation at nodes…

Monkeys will selectively and adaptively learn to avoid the most difficult trials of a perceptual discrimination learning task. Couchman, Coutinho, Beran, and Smith (2010) have recently demonstrated that this pattern of responding does not depend on animals receiving trial-by-trial feedback for their responses; it also obtains if experience of the…

Weight is conceptualized as an embodiment of importance, according to recent research on embodied cognition (Ackerman, Nocera, & Bargh, 2010; Jostmann, Lakens, & Schubert, 2009). Is importance as embodied by weight used as a cue that items are memorable? Four experiments varied participants' perceptual experiences of weight as they studied…

Prior literature has primarily focused on the negative influences of misleading external sources on memory judgments. This study investigated whether participants can capitalize on generally reliable recommendations in order to improve their net performance; the focus was on potential roles for metacognitive monitoring (i.e., knowledge about one's…