PSYC 3610 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Metamemory, Directaccess, Metacognition
20 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 9 METAMEMORY
Metamemory
• Metacognition: our knowledge and awareness of our own cognitive
processes
• Research suggests that based on our metacognitive awareness, we often
make sophisticated decision about how to go about learning, remembering,
and finding our way when lost.
• Metamemory: our knowledge and awareness of our own memory processes
• Metamemory includes the ability to both monitor one’s own memory abilities
and control them.
• It allows human beings to reflect on their own memory processes and to
actively and expertly self-regulate their memory.
What is Metamemory?
Monitoring
• Monitoring: our ability to reflect on and become aware of what we know and
do not know
o When we judge whether or not we think we can remember something
o When we feel more or less confident that we know something
o When we feel more or less confident that we have understood
something
• Monitoring accuracy: the extent to which our judgments of what we know
correspond to our actual stage of knowledge
o When you think you know something, you do know it; and when you
think you do not know something, you indeed do not know it.
• If you think you can remember something, then fail to do so, your monitoring
has failed you as well as your memory.
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o And if you think you cannot remember something but then do so, your
monitoring has also failed.
• It is the correspondence between your actual state of knowledge and your
metamemory that matters.
• Monitoring must be able to feed into actual behaviours that can control our
learning.
o Self-regulation or metacognitive control
Control
• Metacognitive control: self-regulation directed at memory
o Use the output of monitoring to inform decisions we make about
learning and remembering
• Control processes are only as good as the accuracy of the monitoring that
allows for appropriate adjustment of behaviour.
• Control: our ability to regulate our learning or retrieval based upon our own
monitoring
• E.g., If you are confident you have the recipe memorized (monitoring), you will
start gathering the ingredients and turning the oven (control). If you are
uncertain that you remember the recipe (monitoring), you will look for the
cookbook on your bookshelf (control).
Metamemory Judgements
• Metamemory judgments: the subjective reports that people give to indicate
whether they think they have learned or can retrieve and target memory
• Nelson and Narens (1990) divided metamemory judgments at various stages
of memory processing.
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1. Encoding or learning
o Ease-of-learning judgments (EOLs): estimates made before
studying an item of how likely it will be remembered and how difficult it
will be to learn
o Judgments of learning (JOLs): determinations made during study of
whether an item has been learned already
2. Retrieval
o Feelings-of-knowing (FOKs): estimations of the likelihood that an
unrecalled item will be recognized
o Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs): feelings that an unrecalled item will
be recalled soon
▪ Feelings of temporary inaccessibility
o Retrospective confidence judgments (RCJs): estimations that a
retrieved answer is indeed correct
Theories of Metamemory
Direct-Access Theories
• Direct-Access theories: judgments we make are based on the same
processes that allow us to remember in the first place
o Metamemory judgments measure the strength of a stored memory,
even if it cannot be recalled.
o E.g., When you look at a word pair that you are studying, you judge
your confidence by directly accessing how strongly that pair is stored
in your semantic memory.
o Similarly, when you are in a TOT for the name of a famous person, it
is the actual strength of the name itself that is driving the feeling of
TOT.
• For FOKs and TOTs, direct-access views argue that the judgments arise from
sensitivity to the unretrieved target.
Document Summary
It allows human beings to reflect on their own memory processes and to actively and expertly self-regulate their memory. It is the correspondence between your actual state of knowledge and your metamemory that matters: monitoring must be able to feed into actual behaviours that can control our learning, self-regulation or metacognitive control. If you are uncertain that you remember the recipe (monitoring), you will look for the cookbook on your bookshelf (control). Metamemory judgements: metamemory judgments: the subjective reports that people give to indicate whether they think they have learned or can retrieve and target memory, nelson and narens (1990) divided metamemory judgments at various stages of memory processing. Tot: for foks and tots, direct-access views argue that the judgments arise from sensitivity to the unretrieved target. It is not the exact memory that drives the feeling of knowing: instead, it is other kinds of information that correlate with the likelihood that we do have that memory.
