The effect of value on judgment of learning in tradeoff learning condition: the mediating role of study time

Abstract

Metamemory refers to the metacognitive awareness of one’s own memory status. Previous research has shown that item value plays a dominant role in self-regulated study (e.g., strategic choices regarding when, what, and how to study). In spite of extensive research on the effects of item value on in learners’ study behaviour, less is known about the effects of item value on judgments of learning (JOLs; i.e., metacognitive predictions about the likelihood that a given item can be remembered at a future occasion), especially when item value and item difficulty conflict. Three experiments were conducted in the present study to examine whether the effect of item-value can override the effect of item difficulty on JOLs. In each trial, three word pairs, associated with varying difficulty levels, were presented simultaneously, and the three pairs were all associated with a single point value in the constant-value condition, but with different point values in the tradeoff condition. Point values were presented alongside the word pairs. After the learning phase, participants made item-by-item JOLs. Experiment 1 demonstrated that JOLs systematically decreased with the increase of item difficulty in the constant value condition. Critically, item-value eliminated (but failed to reverse) people’s preference for easy items in the 1–3-6 tradeoff condition. Experiment 2 expanded the value gradient and found a full reversal, such that JOLs were primarily influenced by item value. Experiment 3 measured study time allocation to explore the mechanisms underlying learners’ metacognitive monitoring process. A mediation analysis showed that the direct effect of value on JOLs was apparent only when value was highly salient; with lower value salience, the effect of value on JOLs was entirely mediated by changes in study time. The findings of the present study further complement the agenda-based regulation (ABR) model on value-directed metacognitive monitoring. An analytic method to examine the function of a particular cue on JOLs for the cue-utilization hypothesis is also provided.