Abstract
Deciding what items to restudy is an important aspect of self-regulated learning. Previous research (Robey et al. Psychological Science, 28(11), 1683–1693, 2017) reports that having learners make different types of metacognitive judgments affects restudy decisions. More specifically, when learners made retrospective confidence judgments (RCJs), they were less likely to choose to restudy information they already knew compared to when they made judgments of learning (JOLs). Additionally, both metacognitive judgments and restudy decisions were better correlated with recall accuracy for learners who made RCJs compared to learners who made JOLs. The present study describes a conceptual replication of Robey et al., which sought to extend their findings in two ways: First, by using two different types of study material that extend the generalizability of the original findings, and second, by increasing the delay between study and test. The majority of the findings reported in Robey et al. replicated under these new conditions, and those that did not were in the same numerical direction as the original study, though not convincing based on the Bayes factor. We again found that metacognitive judgments and restudy decisions were better correlated with recall accuracy for learners who made RCJs than JOLs. Additionally, both metacognitive accuracy and restudy decisions varied as a function of the type of study material.
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Data availability
Data and materials can be found on the Open Science Framework. Data: https://osf.io/kc5y7/. Full list of stimuli: https://osf.io/s3zhb/
Code availability
Data analysis code can be found on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/8eph6/
Notes
In this preregistration this effect was described as “more accurate restudy decisions”, however based on the results of more recent studies we are no longer confident that a better correlation between recall accuracy and restudy decisions indicates more accurate decisions.
The project reported in this paper was completed as part of a student training seminar in which undergraduate students were trained on methods for conducting reproducible and transparent research. The second through 5th authors participated as undergraduate research assistants.
The working memory tasks and study habit survey were not included in the pre-registration. These tasks were added to the study to allow us to reach the minimum allowed 30 min session length for Day 2 and were only used for in-lab purposes.
The ordering of blocks did not impact any of the results and will not be discussed further
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Robey, A., Castillo, C., Ha, J. et al. Generalizing the effect of type of metacognitive judgment on restudy decisions. Metacognition Learning 17, 73–85 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-021-09274-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-021-09274-8