Faculty of Social Science

Influence of Perceptual Factors on Metacognition

with Alan Castel (UCLA)

Which of the above representations of "salt" "pepper" do you think will give rise to the best performance in a subsequent memory test? (Metacognition/Judgment of Learning)
What will be the actual performance in a memory test with words shown in such representations? (Recall)

Goal

Rhodes & Castel (2008) report experiments where a discrepancy between judement of learning and actual recall is caused by perceptual factors, such as, font size, giving rise to metacognitive illusions. The goal of the research is to investigate the infuence of various configural factors (e.g., visual connectors, separators, figure-ground, etc) on metacognition and actual recall rate. The factors leading to such metacognitive illusions will be studied by psychophysical experiments and eye-movememnt recordings. Implications of such representations on design of displays for advertisements will also be investigated.

 

Reference

Rhodes, M. G., & Castel, A. D. (2008). Memory predictions are influenced by perceptual information: Evidence for metacognitive illusions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 615-625.