Evidence for Metacognition: knowing what you know #

Every substantive claim on the Metacognition: knowing what you know page is checked against current research. Here is each claim, how well today’s evidence supports it, and the sources. The full, de-duplicated source list lives on the references page.

Supported · moderate evidence — Rereading produces a feeling of fluency or familiarity that learners misread as evidence of learning, inflating confidence out of step with actual later memory (the illusion of competence).

Koriat & Bjork demonstrated that processing fluency during easy study (such as rereading) systematically inflates judgments of learning relative to real retention; the finding that learners overrate fluent study experiences is well replicated and remains a textbook example of metacognitive error.

Sources: Koriat & Bjork (2005), Illusions of Competence in Monitoring One’s Knowledge During Study, Journal of Experimental Psychology: LMC — https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/07/Koriat_Bjork_2005.pdf · full reference ›

Supported · strong evidence — Rereading and highlighting are low-utility study techniques despite being the most common strategies students use.

Dunlosky et al.’s comprehensive review rated rereading, highlighting and summarisation as low-utility while practice testing and distributed practice were high-utility; this ranking is widely endorsed and still the standard reference.

Sources: Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan & Willingham (2013), Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques, Psychological Science in the Public Interest — https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1529100612453266 · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — Students who overestimate their own knowledge study less and stop studying too early, and this overconfidence causally produces lower achievement.

Dunlosky & Rawson found across course assessments that overconfident metacognitive monitoring led students to terminate study prematurely and underachieve; the link between poor calibration, undisciplined regulation of study, and worse outcomes is well established in the self-regulated-learning literature.

Sources: Dunlosky & Rawson (2012), Overconfidence Produces Underachievement: Inaccurate Self Evaluations Undermine Students’ Learning and Retention, Learning and Instruction — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2011.08.003 · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — The poorest performers at a skill tend to most grossly overestimate their own ability, because the competence needed to perform the task is also the competence needed to recognise poor performance.

Kruger & Dunning’s core observation that low performers lack the metacognitive insight to recognise their deficits is robust and replicated, though the size and statistical interpretation of the effect (e.g. regression-to-the-mean and better-than-average components) are debated; the practical lesson that beginners are poorly calibrated holds.

Sources: Kruger & Dunning (1999), Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology — https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121 · full reference ›

Supported · strong evidence — Attempting to retrieve information from memory exposes gaps in knowledge that re-reading hides, providing accurate feedback about what has and has not been learned.

It is well established that retrieval attempts surface unlearned material and improve the accuracy of judgments of learning relative to restudy; testing as a diagnostic that corrects metacognitive illusions is a cornerstone of the science-of-learning literature.

Sources: Kornell & Bjork (2008), Learning Concepts and Categories: Is Spacing the ‘Enemy of Induction’?, Psychological Science — https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02127.x · Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan & Willingham (2013), Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques, Psychological Science in the Public Interest — https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1529100612453266 · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — Generating an answer (even a wrong guess) before being shown the correct one improves subsequent learning compared with simply studying the answer.

The benefit of attempting retrieval or generation before feedback—including from unsuccessful guesses—is supported by Kornell and colleagues and by the broader ’errorful generation’ and pretesting literature, with the caveat that corrective feedback after the guess is important.

Sources: Kornell, Hays & Bjork (2009), Unsuccessful Retrieval Attempts Enhance Subsequent Learning, Journal of Experimental Psychology: LMC — https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015729 · Richland, Kornell & Kao (2009), The Pretesting Effect: Do Unsuccessful Retrieval Attempts Enhance Learning?, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied — https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016496 · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — Judgments of learning made immediately after study are poorly calibrated, but judgments delayed by a period of time are substantially more accurate (the delayed-JOL effect).

Nelson & Dunlosky’s delayed-judgment-of-learning effect—that predictions made after a delay predict later recall far better than immediate ones—is a reliable and frequently replicated finding in metamemory research.

Sources: Nelson & Dunlosky (1991), When People’s Judgments of Learning (JOLs) Are Extremely Accurate at Predicting Subsequent Recall: The ‘Delayed-JOL Effect’, Psychological Science — https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1991.tb00147.x · full reference ›