Metahypermnesia: The Effects of Incentives and Item Types (Image vs. Word)

Abstract

<p>People sometimes make predictions about life events. These often include monitoring and control processes. Metacognition, which is subfield of cognition, has these processes. Metacognition research includes memory, attention, and comprehension studies. Hypermnesia is one of the topics relating to memory, simply meaning level of recall with regard to a repeated task. Thus, metahypermnesia is thoughts and judgements about hypermnesia. The aim of the present study was to find out whether people would overestimate or underestimate their performance on a given hypermnesia task that used images and words. Additionally, the effect of monetary incentives on the image and word test were investigated. Thus, it was hypothesised that people would overestimate their performance compared to their actual performance in the tasks. 134 participants were recruited for the study. The results illustrated that participants&rsquo; performance affected by monetary incentives and recall type. Importantly, giving incentives enhanced participants&rsquo; performance on image test but not word test. Participants also overestimated their performance on both the image and word tests, regardless of whether they received monetary incentives. However, participants overestimated their performance when they were incentivized more than they were not.</p>