Year

2024

Season

Spring

Paper Type

Master's Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Degree Name

Master of Science in Psychological Science (MSPS)

Department

Psychology

NACO controlled Corporate Body

University of North Florida. Department of Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Sara D. Davis

Second Advisor

Dr. Charles J. Fitzsimmons

Abstract

Interpolated tests benefit retention of both tested material and material learned afterward. One proposed mechanism for the potentiating effect of testing involves the learner gleaning metacognitive information from tests regarding how well the material is being learned, curbing overconfidence and influencing future encoding strategies. The current study investigated whether making judgments of learning (JOLs) may similarly induce metacognitive introspection and benefit learning. An online sample of 464 adults from the United States was randomly assigned to one of three interim task conditions and one of three JOL conditions that determined how they would interact with each of the four text passage sections they read. Participants either made no JOLs, one JOL, or four JOLs, and either restudied, completed a test, or completed a brief filler task after each section. All participants were tested on the final section. Analyses revealed that participants who were tested on previous sections performed better on a test of the final section than those who were not tested. Though there was no significant interaction between interim task and JOL conditions, exploratory analyses found that eliciting JOLs eliminated the potentiating effects of testing under certain conditions. Eliciting JOLs may influence future memory and may not be a neutral event in retrieval practice contexts. Future studies are recommended to determine the boundary conditions of JOL reactivity in testing paradigms.

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