Judgments of learning (JOLs) are prospective monitoring judgments with which learners predict the likelihood that they will remember an item on a future test. JOLs are valuable educational tools because learners can use them to guide their study decisions. As well, in some contexts, making JOLs can directly impact memory, an effect referred to as
JOL reactivity
. The goals of the present research were to (a) evaluate competing theories of JOL reactivity and (b) to explore whether JOLs have reactive effects when learning foreign language vocabulary. Participants studied German - English vocabulary pairs. Half of the pairs were cognates (e.g.,
haar - hair
) and half were non-cognates (e.g.,
korb - basket
). Half of the participants made a JOL for each pair (JOL group) and half did not (no JOL group). Study time was experimenter-paced (Experiment 1) or self-paced (Experiments 2 and 3). Negative reactivity (i.e. lower memory performance in the JOL group) was observed for non-cognate pairs, and no reactivity was observed for cognate pairs. Study time data suggested that this was due to participants in the JOL group shifting study time from non-cognates to cognates. These outcomes are consistent with predictions from the changed goal hypothesis of JOL reactivity.
- Do judgments of learning have reactive effects on learning of foreign language vocabulary?
- Ariana Elsden - Creighton UniversityAmber E. Witherby - Creighton University
- Metacognition and learning, Vol.21(1), p.12
- Springer US
- 991006263731402656
- Psychological Science
- English
- Journal article