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Methodological concerns: the feeling-of-knowing task affects resolution

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Abstract

In traditional feeling-of-knowing procedures, participants make judgments on unrecalled items only (e.g. Hart 1965). However, many researchers elicit feeling-of-knowing judgments (FOKs) on all items. When FOKs are made on all items, participants may use recall as a basis for judgments, leading to higher magnitude judgments for recalled items, but causing a relative floor effect for judgments for unrecalled items. We suspected that resolution (relative accuracy) would be better when FOKs are made on all items than when they are made on unrecalled items only. We examined the issue by comparing across studies, reanalyzing data from another experiment, and by conducting an original experiment. In the literature review, we included 83 conditions across 52 studies. We found that feeling-of-knowing judgments made on all items showed higher resolution than feeling-of-knowing judgments made on unrecalled items. This was replicated in the reanalysis of existing data of a single study that used both methods. In the original experiment, we collected feeling-of-knowing judgments for general-information questions. The experiment confirmed that resolution for predicting recognition was higher when feeling-of-knowing judgments were made on all items than when they were made only on unrecalled items. We discuss both methodological and theoretical implications of these data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Florida International University, University Park, Miami, FL, 33199, USA

    Bennett L. Schwartz

  2. Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Aysecan Boduroglu & Ali İ. Tekcan

Authors
  1. Bennett L. Schwartz
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  2. Aysecan Boduroglu
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Correspondence to Bennett L. Schwartz.

Appendix

Appendix

Studies using FOK on unrecalled only

Boduroglu et al. (2015)

Hicks and Marsh (2002)

Hosey et al. (2009)

Korenman and Peynircioglu (2004)

Le Berre et al. (2010)

Metcalfe et al. (1993)

Maril et al. (2003)

Peynircioglu et al. (1998)

Peynircioglu and Tekcan (2000)

Pinon et al. (2005)

Rabinovitz and Peynircioğlu (2011)

Schwartz et al. (2014)

Tekcan et al. (2007)

Tekcan and Akturk (2001)

Thomas et al. (2011)

Tuna et al. (2005)

Watier and Collin (2011)

Widner et al. (1996)

Studies using all-items but analyzing unrecalled only

Eakin and Hertzog (2012)

Eakin et al. (2014)

Hertzog et al. (2010)

Hertzog et al. (2014)

MacLaverty and Hertzog (2009)

Sacher et al. (2009)

Sacher et al. (2013)

Souchay et al. (2007)

Studies using all-items

Boduroglu et al. (2014)

Boduroglu et al. (2015)

Eakin and Hertzog (2012)

Koriat (1993)

Koriat (1995)

Koriat and Levy-Sadot (2001)

MacLaverty and Hertzog (2009)

Modirrousta and Fellows (2008)

Perrotin et al. (2006)

Perrotin et al. (2008). Reggev et al. (2011)

Sacher et al. (2014)

Souchay & Isingrini (2012)

Swerts and Krahmer (2005)

Watier and Collin (2011)

Watier and Collin (2012)

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Schwartz, B.L., Boduroglu, A. & Tekcan, A.İ. Methodological concerns: the feeling-of-knowing task affects resolution. Metacognition Learning 11, 305–316 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-015-9152-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-015-9152-4

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