Abstract
In two experiments, we asked college students to judge the ease of learning word pairs known to differ reliably in actual ease of learning. The independent variable in both experiments was the rate of presentation (fast and slow) of to-be-judged items. The results of both experiments revealed only small differences in decision accuracy as a function of presentation rate. This suggests that metacognitive judgments of this kind rely on rather fundamental cognitive processes, which in our view are similar to those used to discover meaning in everyday verbal messages.
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We wish to acknowledge support provided by a small grant from the Loyola University Research Services department. Thanks are also due John J. Shaughnessy for his critical reading of a draft of this manuscript and James W. Hall for many helpful discussions on this topic.
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Zechmeister, E.B., Bennett, D.J. How easy is it to judge ease of learning?. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 29, 36–38 (1991). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334762
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334762