REMEMBERING RESPONSES AND COGNITIVE ESTIMATES OF KNOWING - THE EFFECTS OF INSTRUCTIONS, RETRIEVAL SEQUENCES, AND FEEDBACK

Two experiments examined the effects of feedback on a person's ability to recall their responses to multiple-choice items and the confidence with which they made those responses within the context of a control theory of feedback processing. In Experiment 1, instructions to rememb er answers and confidence ratings (instructions vs no instructions) we re varied with feedback for responding (feedback vs no feedback). In E xperiment 2, all subjects received instructions to remember their resp onses, and feedback was varied with retrieval cue sequence: answer giv en first vs confidence rating given first. Feedback reduced the rate o f error perseveration and decreased the likelihood of retrieving origi nal answers. Subjects allocated more time to study feedback when they erred with a high level of confidence that they were correct. Subjects took less time to retrieve confidence ratings when they were given th e answer first as a retrieval cue. Instructions to remember had no eff ect on recall. Results suggest that learners closely monitor their per sonal estimates of knowing in an effort to regulate future learning. T he relationship of these personal estimates to feedback also provides an explanation for the phenomenon of hindsight bias. (C) 1997 Academic Press.