Metamemory Monitoring and Control in Schema-Based Source Monitoring

• Applicants: Professorin Ute J. Bayen, Ph.D.; Dr. Marie Luisa Schaper
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 436585458

Source monitoring (i.e., the processes involved in attributing remembered information to its source), is a core aspect of episodic remembering. In daily life, information usually fits the schema of its source, resulting in expectations about sources. For example, progressive newspapers are an expected source of articles favoring progressive social policies. Such expectations affect source memory: Memory for unexpected sources (if corrected for guessing bias) is better than memory for expected sources (e.g., Küppers & Bayen, 2014). However, when people do not remember the source of information, they tend to guess that the information originated from an expected source (see review by Kuhlmann & Bayen, 2016). This often results in correct source attributions, but can also lead to systematic errors (i.e., false attributions to an expected source). Metacognition plays an important role in source monitoring. Even though memory is better for unexpected sources, people hold the strong, yet false metamemory conviction that memory is better for expected sources (expectancy illusion; Schaper, Kuhlmann, & Bayen, 2019). The goal of the proposed project is to improve source memory by correcting the expectancy illusion, thus improving metamemory monitoring (i.e., predicting one’s own memory) and metamemory control (i.e., taking measures to achieve a desired level of memory). The expectancy illusion results both from false a priori beliefs and from an experience of high information-processing fluency when information stems from an expected source (Schaper et al., 2019). In a series of schema-based source-monitoring experiments, we therefore seek to improve metamemory monitoring in two ways. First, we want to correct a priori beliefs by directly manipulating beliefs and by providing test feedback. Second, we want to encourage the use of valid experiential cues in metamemory judgments by delaying metamemory judgments and by triggering retrieval attempts. Then, we will study how improved monitoring influences metamemory control and source memory. We will obtain bias-free measures of source memory via hierarchical multinomial modeling. The expectancy illusion should result in poor study choices (e.g., choosing to re-study information from unexpected sources). Improved metamemory monitoring should lead to improved metamemory control in the form of better study choices (e.g., choosing to re-study information from expected sources). This should in turn improve memory for expected sources. The results will provide new theoretical insight into metamemory monitoring and metamemory control of source memory. Further, they will have practical implications for improving source memory.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants