Monika Undorf | University of Mannheim (original) (raw)

Papers by Monika Undorf

Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 2020

Cognition, 2022

Studies of the mind often focus on general effects on cognitive processes, whereas influences of ... more Studies of the mind often focus on general effects on cognitive processes, whereas influences of idiosyncratic interactions between participants and items evade experimental control or assessment. For instance, assessments of one's own learning and memory processes-metamemory judgments-are attributed to people's reliance on commonly shared characteristics of study materials (e.g., word frequency) or learning conditions (e.g., number of study opportunities). By contrast, few studies have investigated how idiosyncratic information such as the personal significance of items affects memory and metamemory. We propose that hitherto elusive idiosyncratic influences on metamemory can be measured by the C component of Egon Brunswik's (1952) lens model. In two experiments, we made randomly chosen items personally significant (Experiment 1) or assessed the personal significance of items (Experiment 2). Personal significance increased both metamemory judgments and memory performance. Including personal significance as a predictor in the lens model reduced C, whereas including familiarity from a previous encounter did not. Hence, at least part of the lens model's C parameter captures idiosyncratic influences on metamemory. The C parameter may serve as a useful tool for future research.

Cognitive Illusions, 2022

People often reflect on their own learning, memory, and thinking. Imagine, for instance, students... more People often reflect on their own learning, memory, and thinking. Imagine, for instance, students who are preparing for an exam. They engage in study activities such as reviewing lecture slides, rereading book chapters, writing summaries, or using flashcards. At the same time, they think about whether they understand the texts they are reading, consider how well they can remember definitions, concepts, and theories, and evaluate whether they have sufficiently learned the material to succeed in the exam. Thus, some of the students' cognitions are cognitive processes about cognitive processes, often termed metacognition (Flavell, 1971; Nelson & Narens, 1990). Metacognition entails two components (Nelson & Narens, 1990). Metacognitive monitoring refers to thoughts, knowledge, and judgments about cognitive processes as well as to assessments of one's own cognitions. Metacognitive control refers to the use of this information for regulating cognition and behavior. In our example, the students engage in metacognitive monitoring when thinking about their understanding and learning, when reflecting on their learning progress, and when assessing their overall level of knowledge. They engage in metacognitive control when utilizing the output of their monitoring processes to self-regulate their learning. A student who feels that he does not progress well might try a different study strategy or take a break, whereas a student who thinks that she has sufficiently mastered the material might stop studying altogether. Decades of research have demonstrated that accurate metacognition is critical for good performance on various cognitive tasks. For instance, a recent meta-analysis showed that accurate metacognition positively predicts academic performance in adults, adolescents, and children even when controlling for intelligence (Ohtani & Hisasaka, 2018). Thus, much can be gained from accurate metacognition. At the same time, there is a real danger that metacognitive illusions undermine cognitive performance. Metacognitive illusions are defined as reliable and systematic dissociations between people's metacognitions and cognitions. Thus, unlike optical or cognitive illusions, illusory metacognitions do not deviate from some external "reality" (see Introduction) but from the cognitions they are supposed to assess. Apart from this difference, however, cognitive and metacognitive illusions share their defining features. In particular, illusory metacognitions occur involuntary, clash with people's conviction that they know their own minds, are difficult to avoid, and have attracted a great deal of interest from researchers and practitioners (e.g.

Metacognition and Learning, 2021

When responding to knowledge questions, people monitor their confidence in the knowledge they ret... more When responding to knowledge questions, people monitor their confidence in the knowledge they retrieve from memory and strategically regulate their responses so as to provide answers that are both correct and informative. The current study investigated the association between subjective confidence and the use of two response strategies: seeking help and withholding answers by responding “I don’t know”. Seeking help has been extensively studied as a resource management strategy in self-regulated learning, but has been largely neglected in metacognition research. In contrast, withholding answers has received less attention in educational studies than in metacognition research. Across three experiments, we compared the relationship between subjective confidence and strategy use in conditions where participants could choose between submitting answers and seeking help, between submitting and withholding answers, or between submitting answers, seeking help, and withholding answers. Result...

Memory, 2021

ABSTRACT Hindsight bias describes people’s tendency to overestimate how accurately they have pred... more ABSTRACT Hindsight bias describes people’s tendency to overestimate how accurately they have predicted an event’s outcome after obtaining knowledge about it. Outcome knowledge has been shown to influence various forms of judgments, but it is unclear whether outcome knowledge also produces a hindsight bias on Judgments of Learning (JOLs). Three experiments tested whether people overestimated the accuracy of their memory predictions after obtaining knowledge about their actual memory performance. In all experiments, participants studied 60 cue-target word pairs, made a JOL for each word pair, and tried to recall the targets in a cued-recall test. In Experiments 1a and 1b, people recollected their original JOLs after attempting to recall each target, that is, after they obtained outcome knowledge for all items. In Experiments 2 and 3, people recollected their original JOLs in a separate phase after attempting to recall half the targets so that they had outcome knowledge for some but not all items. In all experiments, recollected JOLs were closer to actual memory performance than original JOLs for items with outcome knowledge only. Thus, outcome knowledge produced a hindsight bias on JOLs. Our results demonstrate that people overestimate the accuracy of their memory predictions in hindsight.

Although recollection-based memory declines with age, relative metamemory monitoring is reported ... more Although recollection-based memory declines with age, relative metamemory monitoring is reported to be spared from aging. Based on a dual-process perspective on memory, we tested whether it is specifically the monitoring of automatic influences of memory (familiarity), but not of recollection, that is spared. In Experiment 1, we used the process-dissociation procedure (PDP) task from Undorf, Böhm, and Cüpper (2016) requiring modality-based exclusions and found older (61–83 years) adults’ judgments of learning (JOLs) to predict both recollection and familiarity estimates. Comparisons to Undorf et al.’s younger-adult (18–34 years) data revealed fully spared familiarity monitoring but provided some evidence for impaired recollection monitoring, especially after study-test experience. We replicated aging-spared familiarity monitoring but impaired recollection monitoring in a second experiment, comparing the predictive value of younger (18–30 years) and older (60–87 years) adults’ JOLs o...

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2021

Predictions of one’s future memory performance – judgments of learning (JOLs) – are based on the ... more Predictions of one’s future memory performance – judgments of learning (JOLs) – are based on the cues that learners regard as diagnostic of memory performance. One of these cues is word frequency or how often words are experienced in the language. It is not clear, however, whether word frequency would affect JOLs when other cues are also available. The current study aims to close this gap by testing whether objective and subjective word frequency affect JOLs in the presence of font size as an additional cue. Across three experiments, participants studied words that varied in word frequency (Experiment 1: high and low objective frequency; Experiment 2: a whole continuum from high to low objective frequency; Experiment 3: high and low subjective and objective frequency) and were presented in a large (48pt) or a small (18pt) font size, made JOLs, and completed a free recall test. Results showed that people based their JOLs on both word frequency and font size. We conclude that word fre...

Memory & Cognition, 2021

Memory for naturalistic pictures is exceptionally good. However, little is known about people’s a... more Memory for naturalistic pictures is exceptionally good. However, little is known about people’s ability to monitor the memorability of naturalistic pictures. We report the first systematic investigation into the accuracy and basis of metamemory in this domain. People studied pictures of naturalistic scenes, predicted their chances of recognizing each picture at a later test (judgment of learning, JOL), and completed a recognition memory test. Across three experiments, JOLs revealed substantial accuracy. This was due to people basing their JOLs on multiple cues, most of which predicted recognition memory. Identified cues include intrinsic picture attributes (e.g., peacefulness of scenes; scenes with or without persons) and extrinsic aspects of the study situation (e.g., presentation frequency; semantic distinctiveness of scenes with respect to the context). This work provides a better understanding of metamemory for pictures and it demonstrates close parallels between metamemory for ...

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2021

According to the principle of inverse effectiveness (PIE), weaker responses to information in one... more According to the principle of inverse effectiveness (PIE), weaker responses to information in one modality (i.e., unisensory) benefit more from additional information in a second modality (i.e., multisensory; Meredith & Stein, 1986). We suggest that the PIE may also inform whether perceptual fluency affects judgments of learning (JOLs). If JOLs follow the PIE, the differences in JOLs for multisensory and unisensory items should increase as the unisensory study items become harder to perceive. That is, an influence of perceptual fluency should prompt a similar, interactive pattern across perceptual responses and JOLs. In 3 experiments, we systematically varied the signal intensity or noise in 1 modality to examine how responses might change with the inclusion of information in a second modality. In Experiment 1, written words in several font sizes were sometimes accompanied by spoken equivalents. In Experiments 2 and 3, spoken words in various background noise levels were sometimes accompanied by visual speech articulations. Consistent with the PIE, the multisensory benefits in response time and/or correct identification increased as responses to unisensory information decreased. Also, the multisensory formats received higher JOLs than the unisensory formats; however, unlike the predictions from PIE, this difference did not increase as study items became harder to perceive. Experiment 3 extended this finding to participants' explicit beliefs. In multisensory settings, JOLs may rely more on theory- than data-driven processes. We suggest that broadly defined processing fluency may always contribute to JOLs, but, regarding perceptual information, JOLs appear to track perceptual attributes rather than perceptual fluency. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Social Cognition, 2020

The Prototypical Majority Effect (PME) refers to the observation that people endorse majority opi... more The Prototypical Majority Effect (PME) refers to the observation that people endorse majority opinions faster and with greater confidence than minority opinions. Although the PME has been assumed to stem from social influence, recent studies showed that it can arise from internal processes underlying decision and confidence alone. We used a conformity paradigm adapted from Asch (1951) to examine the relative contributions of internal and external processes to the PME. Four participants responded in turn to items that had correct or wrong predetermined majority responses. A robust PME was observed before participants saw others’ responses. Seeing these responses, however, increased endorsement, confidence, and speed. Notably, social influence had a considerably weaker impact when it ran counter to the consensus observed in its absence. Thus, internal processes underlying decision and confidence constrain the impact of social conformity. The failure to consider these processes leads t...

Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 2019

Psychonomic bulletin & review, Jan 23, 2017

Learners often allocate more study time to challenging items than to easier ones. Nevertheless, b... more Learners often allocate more study time to challenging items than to easier ones. Nevertheless, both predicted and actual memory performance are typically worse for difficult than for easier items. The resulting inverse relations between people's predictions of their memory performance (judgments of learning; JOLs) and self-paced study time (ST) are often explained by bottom-up, data-driven ST allocation that is based on fluency. However, we demonstrate robust inverted U-shaped relations between JOLs and ST that cannot be explained by data-driven ST allocation alone. Consequently, we explored how two models of top-down, strategic ST allocation account for curvilinear JOL-ST relations. First, according to the Region of Proximal Learning model, people stop quickly on items for which they experience too little progress in learning. Second, according to the Diminishing Criterion Model, people set a time limit and stop studying when this time limit is reached. In three experiments, w...

Paper analyzing 5 experiments on metacognitive Judgments of Learning (JOLs) with Brunswik's l... more Paper analyzing 5 experiments on metacognitive Judgments of Learning (JOLs) with Brunswik's lens model.