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Probing the effect of perceptual (dis)fluency on metacognitive judgments

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Abstract

Despite research showing that perceptually fluent stimuli (i.e., stimuli that are easier to process) are given higher judgment of learning (JOL) ratings than perceptually disfluent stimuli, it remains unknown whether the influence of perceptual fluency on JOLs is driven by the fluent or disfluent items. Moreover, it is unclear whether this difference hinges on relative differences in fluency. The current study addressed these unanswered questions by employing (Fiacconi et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 46:926–944, 2020), Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46[5], 926–944) letter set priming procedure. In this procedure, participants are first exposed to words containing only a subset of letters. Following this exposure, JOLs to new words composed of the same letters (i.e., fluent), and new words composed of nonexposed letters (i.e., disfluent) are compared with isolate the contribution of perceptual fluency. Because this procedure does not rely on parametric variations in perceptual features, we can directly assess the potential benefit and/or cost of fluent and disfluent items, respectively, by including neutral baseline conditions. Moreover, implementing both a mixed- and pure-list design allowed us to assess the comparative nature of perceptual fluency on JOLs. Counter to previous assumptions, our results are the first to demonstrate that perceptual disfluency decreases JOLs. Moreover, we found that the influence of perceptual disfluency on JOLs hinges on the relative differences in fluency between items even in the absence of a belief about the mnemonic impact of the fluency manipulation. These findings have important implications as they provide evidence that the difficulty, rather than ease, of information form the basis of individuals metacognitive judgments.

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Data Availability

Data files and analysis scripts are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF; https://osf.io/aqzwf/). For all other inquiries please contact the corresponding author.

Notes

  1. A 5-second presentation duration was chosen based on the results of Fiacconi et al.’s (Experiment 4a) RT analysis during the study [JOL] phase. In their study, participants were required to name aloud words presented in the study phase. Importantly, the mean RT across participants for primed and unprimed words was 1.861 and 2.229 seconds, respectively. Therefore, to ensure that the majority of words are identified we elected to present all words for 5 seconds each. Moreover, unpublished work from our lab using the same latter set priming procedure but requiring participants to type each word in the study phase demonstrates that the mean time to initiate typing each item when primed and unprimed is 2.591 and 3.349 seconds, respectively.

  2. Due to a coding error the word “zoo” (in place of “zoom”) appeared in two lists in the Equal Training condition. As consequence, this meant that some participants may have been presented the word “zoo” on two different occasions, twice during either the training or study phase, or in both the training and study phase. Indeed, nine participants were presented “zoo” twice in the training phase, two were presented “zoo” twice in the study phase, and 21 participants were presented “zoo” in both the training and study phases. To account for this we removed training phase trials on which the word “zoo” was presented for participants who saw “zoo” twice in the training phase. Additionally, for participants who saw “zoo” twice in the study phase, or in both the training and study phase, we removed trials in the study phase on which “zoo” was presented, and omitted any retrievals of the word during the test phase.

  3. R2alerting is the proportion of variability among condition means that can be attributed to the specific contract being tested and can range from 0 to 1.

  4. We were not able to conduct a traditional one-way ANOVA comparing JOLs given for primed and unprimed words in the Mixed condition and words in the Equal Training and No Training conditions because the comparison of primed and unprimed words constitutes a within-subject comparison, but all other comparisons hinge on between-subject comparisons. For this reason, we elected to instead conduct four separate independent-sample t tests as described in the text.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through a Discovery Grant to C.M.F. We would also like to thank Dana Aronowitz for her assistance with data collection.

Funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada,06032

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada

    Skylar J. Laursen & Chris M. Fiacconi

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  1. Skylar J. Laursen
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  2. Chris M. Fiacconi
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Correspondence to Skylar J. Laursen.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Stimulus pool

Table 2 Word lists used in the Mixed and No Training conditions of Experiment 1, and all conditions of Experiment 2
Full size table
Table 3 Word lists used in the Equal Training condition of Experiment 1
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Table 4 Example presentation of word lists across conditions in Experiments 1 and 2
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Table 5 Example and practice words from Experiments 1 and 2
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Tables 2

Tables 3

Tables 4

Tables 5

Appendix B

Instruction and follow-up questions

Training phase: Mixed and Equal Training conditions from Experiment 1, and all conditions from Experiment 2 (correct answers are italicized)

  1. 1.

    How do you read a mirror reversed word? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      From right to left after flipping each letter horizontally

    2. B.

      From left to right after flipping the word horizontally

    3. C.

      From left to right after flipping each letter horizontally

    4. D.

      From right to left after flipping the word horizontally

  2. 2.

    What do you have to do when each word is presented? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      Read the word aloud to myself

    2. B.

      Type the word in the box provided as quickly and accurately as possible

    3. C.

      I do not have to do anything

  3. 3.

    Can you use the 'backspace' if you make a mistake? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      No

    2. B.

      Yes

  4. 4.

    How do you advance to the next word once you have typed the word currently being presented?~~Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      Press the SPACE bar

    2. B.

      Press the TAB button

    3. C.

      Press the SHIFT key

    4. D.

      Press the ENTER key

Study phase: All conditions from Experiments 1 and 2 (correct answers are italicized and extra questions asked in the No Training condition of Experiment 1 are bolded)

  1. 1.

    How do you read a mirror reversed word? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      From right to left after flipping each letter horizontally

    2. B.

      From left to right after flipping the word horizontally

    3. C.

      From left to right after flipping each letter horizontally

    4. D.

      From right to left after flipping the word horizontally

  2. 2.

    What do the numbers '0' and '100' correspond to when making your ratings? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      0 = not at all likely to recall the word; 100 = very likely to recall the word

    2. B.

      These numbers are arbitrary

    3. C.

      0 = not at all likely to forget the target word; 100 = very likely to forget the target word

  3. 3.

    Do you have to type out the words during this phase? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      Yes

    2. B.

      No

Test phase: All conditions from Experiments 1 and 2 (correct answers are italicized and modifications made to questions in the No Training condition of Experiment 1 are bolded)

  1. 1.

    How long will you have to recall words from the study phase? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      5 minutes

    2. B.

      1 minute

    3. C.

      3 minutes

    4. D.

      4 minutes

  2. 2.

    From which phase do you have to recall words? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      The training (practice) phase (the one where I typed words)

    2. B.

      The study phase (the one where I provided ratings but didn't type words)

    3. C.

      Both the training and study phases

  3. 3.

    How many words do you have to recall during the test phase? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      Half of the words presented in the study phase

    2. B.

      All of the words presented in the study phase

    3. C.

      As many as possible

  4. 4.

    Do you have to take the entire 5 minutes to recall the words? Please select the correct answer on your keyboard.

    1. A.

      Yes, I have to wait the entire 5 minutes

    2. B.

      No, after 1 minute I can press the space bar to end the test phase early

    3. C.

      No, after 2 minutes I can press the space bar to end the test phase early

    4. D.

      No, after 1 minute I can press the enter key to end the test phase early

Follow-up questions: All conditions from Experiments 1 and 2

  1. 1.

    During the experiment, did you write anything down to help with your memory performance (i.e., during the study phase did you write down any of the words)? Please select whichever answer applies to you.

    1. A.

      Yes

    2. B.

      No

  2. 2.

    Did you have any interruptions during your participation today (i.e., did you get distracted by your phone, another person, or leave at any time)? Please select whichever answer applies to you.

    1. A.

      No (I had no interruptions during the experiment)

    2. B.

      Yes (I was interrupted by my phone or another person in the room)

    3. C.

      Yes (I left at some point to do something else)

Appendix C

Awareness questionnaire

  • Please rate on a scale of 1 to 7 how unusual the words in the TRAINING PHASE of the experiment were to you, 1 being not at all unusual and 7 being highly unusual. Please select the number using your keyboard.

    • If your previous answer was greater than 4, please indicate what was unusual about the words in the box provided, then press ENTER. If your answer was not greater than 4, please press ENTER to continue.

  • Please rate on a scale of 1 to 7 how confident you are that there was a pattern(s) among the words in the TRAINING PHASE, 1 being not at all confident and 7 being very confident. Please select the number using your keyboard

    • If your previous answer was greater than 4, please indicate what the patterns were in the box provided, then press ENTER. If your answer was not greater than 4, please press ENTER to continue.

  • Please rate on a scale of 1 to 7 how confident you are that the words in the TRAINING PHASE shared some feature in common, 1 being not at all confident and 7 being highly confident. Please select the number using your keyboard.

    • If your previous answer was greater than 4, please indicate what was shared in common among the words in the box provided, then press ENTER. If your answer was not greater than 4, please press ENTER to continue.

  • Please rate on a scale of 1 to 7 how confident you are that the words in the TRAINING PHASE and the words in the STUDY PHASE shared any features in common, 1 being not at all confident and 7 being highly confident. Please select the number using your keyboard.

    • If your previous answer was greater than 4, please indicate what the similarities were in the box provided, then press ENTER. If your answer was not greater than 4, please press ENTER to continue.

  • Please rate on a scale of 1 to 7 the degree to which you noticed that some of the words in the STUDY PHASE were more difficult to read than others, 1 being they were all equally difficult and 7 being there was noticeable variability in difficulty. Please select the answer on your keyboard.

    • If your previous answer was greater than 4, please indicate what made some of the words more difficult in the box provided, then press ENTER. If your answer was not greater than 4, please press ENTER to continue.

**In the No Training condition of Experiment 1, participants only had to respond to question 5 and 5.1

Appendix D

Mixed-effects models and relevant test statistics

In Experiment 1 we constructed mixed-effects models consisting of by-participant and by-item random intercepts and slopes for the effect of Word Type (i.e., Mixed Primed, Mixed Unprimed, Equal Training, and No Training) along with fixed-effect terms capturing the overall effect of Word Type (i.e., Mixed Primed, Mixed Unprimed, Equal Training, and No Training; implemented using the lme4 package for R; Bates et al., 2015). Using the Anova function from the car package for R (Fox & Weisberg, 2019), our analyses of the fixed-effect terms in all models provided converging evidence that JOLs are impacted by perceptual disfluency, rather than perceptual fluency.

In Experiment 2 we again constructed mixed-effects models consisting of by-participant and by-item random intercepts and slopes for the effect of Word Type (i.e., Mixed Primed, Mixed Unprimed, Pure Primed, and Pure Unprimed) along with fixed-effect terms capturing the overall effect of Word Type (i.e., Mixed Primed, Mixed Unprimed, Pure Primed, and Pure Unprimed; implemented using the lme4 package for R; Bates et al., 2015) in the Mixed condition and across the two Pure conditions. Using the Anova function from the car package for R (Fox & Weisberg, 2019), our analyses of the fixed-effect terms in all models provided converging evidence that JOLs for primed and unprimed words differed in the Mixed condition, but not in the two primed conditions.

Model D1. Used to compare JOLs for Mixed Primed and Mixed Unprimed word types in Experiments 1 and 2.

lmer(JOL ~ Word Type + (1 + Word Type | participant) + (1 + Word Type | Word), REML = TRUE, control = lmerControl(optimizer = “bobyqa”, optCtrl = list(maxfun = 2e5)

Model D2. Used to compare JOLs across word types (i.e., Mixed Primed vs. Equal Training, Mixed Primed vs. No Training , Mixed Unprimed vs. No Training, and Mixed Unprimed vs. Equal Training) in Experiment 1, and for Pure Primed and Pure Unprimed word types in Experiment 2.

lmer(JOL ~ Word Type + (1 | participant) + (1 + Word Type | Word), REML = TRUE, control = lmerControl(optimizer = “bobyqa”, optCtrl = list(maxfun = 2e5)

Model D3. Used to compare memory performance across word types (i.e., Mixed Primed vs. Mixed Unprimed, Mixed Primed vs. Equal Training, and Mixed Unprimed vs. Equal Training) in Experiment 1.

glmer(Memory ~ Word Type + (1 | participant) + (1 | Word),

control = glmerControl(optimizer = “bobyqa”), family = binomial)

Model D4. Used to compare memory performance for Mixed Unprimed and No Training word types in Experiment 1. Additionally used to compare memory performance for Pure Primed and Pure Unprimed word types in Experiment 2.

glmer(Memory ~ Word Type + (1 | participant) + (1 + Word Type | Word),

control = glmerControl(optimizer = “bobyqa”), family = binomial)

Model D5. Used to compare memory performance across word types (i.e., Mixed Primed vs. No Training, and Mixed Unprimed vs. No Training) in Experiment 1. Additionally used to compare memory performance for Mixed Primed and Mixed Unprimed word types in Experiment 2.

glmer(Memory ~ Word Type + (1 + Word Type | participant) + (1 + Word Type | Word),

control = glmerControl(optimizer = “bobyqa”), family = binomial)

Table 6 All relevant test statistics for the evaluation of Models D1 through D5
Full size table

Table 6

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Laursen, S.J., Fiacconi, C.M. Probing the effect of perceptual (dis)fluency on metacognitive judgments. Mem Cogn (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01542-7

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