TY - JOUR
T1 - When will bigger be (recalled) better? The influence of category size on JOLs depends on test format
AU - Hourihan, Kathleen L.
AU - Tullis, Jonathan G.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was in part supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant to Kathleen L. Hourihan. Data were collected while Jonathan G. Tullis was a postdoctoral fellow supported by National Science Foundation REESE grant 0910218, and Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education Grant # R305A1100060 awarded to R. Goldstone.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Psychonomic Society, Inc.
PY - 2015/8/30
Y1 - 2015/8/30
N2 - Although it is well known that organized lists of words (e.g., categories) are recalled better than unrelated lists, little research has examined whether participants can predict how categorical relatedness influences recall. In two experiments, participants studied lists of words that included items from big categories (12 items), small categories (4 items), and unrelated items, and provided immediate JOLs. In Experiment 1, free recall was highest for items from large categories and lowest for unrelated items. Importantly, participants were sensitive to the effects of category size on recall, with JOLs to items from big categories actually increasing over the study list. In Experiment 2, one group of participants was cued to recall all exemplars from the categories in a blocked manner, whereas the other group was cued in a random order. As expected, the random group did not show the recall benefit for big categories over small categories observed in free recall, while the blocked group did. Critically, the pattern of metacognitive judgments closely matched actual cued recall performance. Participants’ JOLs were sensitive to the interaction between category size and output order, demonstrating a relatively sophisticated strategy that incorporates the interaction of multiple extrinsic cues in predicting recall.
AB - Although it is well known that organized lists of words (e.g., categories) are recalled better than unrelated lists, little research has examined whether participants can predict how categorical relatedness influences recall. In two experiments, participants studied lists of words that included items from big categories (12 items), small categories (4 items), and unrelated items, and provided immediate JOLs. In Experiment 1, free recall was highest for items from large categories and lowest for unrelated items. Importantly, participants were sensitive to the effects of category size on recall, with JOLs to items from big categories actually increasing over the study list. In Experiment 2, one group of participants was cued to recall all exemplars from the categories in a blocked manner, whereas the other group was cued in a random order. As expected, the random group did not show the recall benefit for big categories over small categories observed in free recall, while the blocked group did. Critically, the pattern of metacognitive judgments closely matched actual cued recall performance. Participants’ JOLs were sensitive to the interaction between category size and output order, demonstrating a relatively sophisticated strategy that incorporates the interaction of multiple extrinsic cues in predicting recall.
KW - JOLs
KW - Metacognition
KW - Recall
KW - Relatedness
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U2 - 10.3758/s13421-015-0516-4
DO - 10.3758/s13421-015-0516-4
M3 - Article
C2 - 25758175
AN - SCOPUS:84938414842
VL - 43
SP - 910
EP - 921
JO - Memory and Cognition
JF - Memory and Cognition
SN - 0090-502X
IS - 6
ER -