Our earlier research developed a rigorous methodology for investigating particular components of the self-monitoring and self-control of one's own memory, which are the two major categories of the area known as metamemory. In the current grant period, we used that methodology to discover key insights into empirical aspects of those components, and we developed (and published) a theoretical framework for metamemory that integrates those components into an overall structure. The framework describes the roles of (and suggests new directions of empirical research for) the monitoring and control processes that occur during the acquisition, retention, and retrieval of information from memory (e.g., as in the case of a college student studying for and taking an examination). Included among the monitoring processes are: (1) ease- of-learning judgments (made in advance of learning), (2) judgments of learning (made during acquisition), (3) retrospective confidence (judgments about the accuracy of one's recent retrieval), and (4) feeling-of-knowing judgments (predictions of subsequent memory performance on currently nonrecallable items). Included among the control processes are: (5) the allocation of self-paced study time (with emphasis on the termination of study for each item), (6) choice-of-processing judgments (decisions about which kind of memory strategy to employ while learning a given item), (7) strategies for the maintenance of knowledge (i.e., extra rehearsal for recallable items during the retention interval and relearning of forgotten items), (8) strategies for retrieving a given item during the retention test, (9) decisions about whether to output retrieved items, and (10) decisions about when to terminate attempts at retrieval. We now propose a long-term programmatic investigation on metamemory and its linkages to other memory processes, with our theoretical and empirical work stemming out of our already-developed framework. A major thrust of the new research will be to expand on two discoveries from the current grant period: one is a finding that allows us to reliably and dramatically manipulate the accuracy of people's memory monitoring during learning, and the other is a new procedure that allows us to manipulate the metacognitive processing that occurs during retrieval. Altogether, research is proposed on 22 topics. The proposed research is designed both to discover the empirical regularities occurring within our theoretical framework and to develop specific theories about different portions of the framework. The major goal is to establish a sound formulation of (a) monitoring and control processes, (b) their interactions with each other, and (c) how they affect other memory processing, so as to produce an overall system for self-directed learning and memory.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 18 publications
