THE EFFECT OF GENERALIZED METACOGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE ON TEST-PERFORMANCEAND CONFIDENCE JUDGMENTS

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the basis of stude nts' confidence in their answers to test items. The domain-specific hy pothesis predicts that confidence judgments will be related to perform ance on a particular test, but not to confidence judgments or performa nce on unrelated tests. In contrast, the domain-general hypothesis pre dicts that confidence judgments will be related not only to performanc e on a particular test but also to confidence judgments and performanc e on unrelated tests. The results of the present study support the dom ain-general hypothesis. The results of other data analyses suggest tha t the domain-general nature of confidence judgments may be attributabl e to generalized metacognitive knowledge.