Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Making judgments of learning (JOLs) can sometimes directly modify memory performance, which is termed JOL reactivity. One hypothesis posits that making JOLs enhances item-specific processing (as opposed to relational processing). The current study tested this account by manipulating the list organization of categorized lists: Exemplars of a category are either presented consecutively (blocked) or randomly intermixed with exemplars of other categories (randomized). Blocked lists favor relational processing over item-specific processing, whereas it is the opposite for randomized lists. Thus, the item-specific processing account predicts that JOL reactivity would be stronger for blocked lists than randomized lists. However, our results showed the opposite: Making JOLs enhanced recall for randomized but not for blocked lists. Further, the dual-retrieval model results showed that the effects of JOLs are localized in gist-based familiarity rather than item-specific recollection for randomized lists. Together, our findings present a challenge to the item-specific processing account for JOL reactivity.