EFFECT OF OVERLEARNING ON THE FEELING OF KNOWING IS MORE DETECTABLE IN WITHIN-SUBJECT THAN IN BETWEEN-SUBJECT DESIGNS

Conflicting results in the literature concerning the influence of over learning on subsequent feeling of knowing (FOK) judgments for unrecall able items were resolved in an experiment that contrasted within-subje ct and between-subject designs. In the between-subject design, partici pants gave FOK judgments about items all of which had been learned to a criterion of either one or six correct recalls 4 weeks earlier. In t he within-subject design, these judgments were made about the same ite ms, half of which had been correct once and half six times. Results sh owed that the effect of overlearning on FOK ratings was more detectabl e in the within-subject design than in the between-subject design. It is suggested that future experiments on metacognition should use withi n-subject designs for maximal detectability of the effect of an indepe ndent variable on metacognitive judgments.