Chapter 6

1. Chapter 6 Metacognition

2. 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

3. 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 on a memory test.

4. 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.

5. 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.

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

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. Metacognition • Metamemory and the Regulation of Study Strategies • coordinate memory and decision making • remember to spend more time on difficult material

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. Metacognition • Metamemory and the Likelihood of Remembering a Specific Target • 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 • The feeling-of-knowing effect—subjective experience of knowing some information, but cannot recall it right now; more conscious experience

18. 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.

19. Metacognition • Metamemory and the Likelihood of Remembering a Specific Target • The Tip-of-the-Tongue Effect • Later Research • oftenaccompanied by nonverbal behaviors (e.g., exaggerated facial expression, foot movements); an example of embodied cognition (thoughts expressed as motor behavior)

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

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