DOES THE SENSITIVITY OF JUDGMENTS OF LEARNING (JOLS) TO THE EFFECTS OF VARIOUS STUDY ACTIVITIES DEPEND ON WHEN THE JOLS OCCUR

Judgments of learning (JOLs) made immediately after items are studied have been shown to be insensitive to the way in which eventual memory performance is affected by (a) imagery versus rote rehearsal and (b) d istributed versus massed repetitions. One explanation is that JOLs mad e immediately after study assess transient information that affects JO Ls but is not predictive of eventual memory performance. Accordingly, we hypothesized that if the JOLs are delayed until the transient infor mation about the to-be-judged item has dissipated, they might more acc urately assess the effects of the study activities on subsequent reten tion. Our two experiments confirmed that hypothesis. The magnitude of delayed JOLs was greater after interactive imagery than after rote reh earsal (Experiment 1) and was greater after distributed repetitions th an after massed repetitions (Experiment 2). Also, the distributions of JOLs indicated greater confidence (polarization) for delayed JOLs tha n for immediate JOLs, and the accuracy of predicting item-by-item rete ntion was greater for delayed JOLs than for immediate JOLs in every co ndition (rote rehearsal, interactive imagery, single presentations, ma ssed repetitions, and distributed repetitions). Thus people's timing o f their JOLs is critical for several aspects of metacognition. (C) 199 4 Academic Press, Inc.