Increased metamemory accuracy with practice does not require practice with metamemory

Abstract

Given that learners do not always predict their future memory performance accurately, there is a need to better understand how metamemory accuracy can be improved. Prior research suggests that one way to improve is practice—participants tend to become better at predicting their future memory performance over the course of multi-trial learning experiments. However, it is currently unclear whether such improvements result from participants having practised making metamemory judgements or whether comparable improvements occur even in their absence. This issue was investigated in three multi-trial, cued recall experiments wherein participants either did or did not receive practice making judgements of learning. Metamemory accuracy increased across study blocks but did so equally for the two groups. These results indicate that increased metamemory accuracy with practice is not due to participants having practised explicit metamemory monitoring but instead due to other factors associated with multi-trial learning such as retrieval practice and the availability of prior test performance as a metamemory cue.