Cognition, 8e
Chapter 6
Metacognition
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 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
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
Metacognition
Metamemory and the Regulation of
Study Strategies
• coordinate memory and decision making
• remember to spend more time on
difficult material
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
Metacognition
Metamemory and the Likelihood of
Remembering a Specific Target
1. 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
2. The feeling-of-knowing effect—subjective
experience of knowing some information, but
cannot recall it right now; more conscious
experience
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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 firstletter and/or other attributes like number of
syllables.
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
Metacognition
Metamemory and the Likelihood of
Remembering a Specific Target
The Tip-of-the-Tongue Effect
Later Research
• often accompanied by nonverbal behaviors
(e.g., exaggerated facial expression, foot
movements); an example of embodied
cognition (thoughts expressed as motor
behavior)
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
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
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6
Metacognition
Metacomprehension
Metacomprehension Accuracy
Pressley and Ghatala (1988)
• students believed that they understood the
material, even when they answered the
questions incorrectly
Cognition, 8e by Margaret W. Matlin
Chapter 6