Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We examined if using meta-memory judgments to controlrestudy choices has a positive impact on undergraduatestudents’ memory performance, or whether simply makingmeta-memory judgments improved memory performance. 72undergraduates at the University of Exeter were randomlydivided into three groups. Participants in group A, had a chanceto make meta-memory judgments and restudied the words theychose (self- selection). Participants in group B, also mademeta-memory judgments, but restudy for this group wasmatched to that of Group A (control 1). Group C did not havea chance to make meta-memory judgments and were alsomatched to Group A for restudy opportunities (control 2). Theresults indicated that making meta-memory judgments had apositive overall impact on memory performance ifundergraduates were allowed to control their restudyopportunities. Groups B and C showed no differences inmemory performance, which means that making meta-memoryjudgments did not automatically improve memoryperformance. Group A restudied more of the words that theyhad rated as least well learned, and there were no significantdifferences between groups on test for the restudied words.