Individual's Learning Behavior Under Biased Judgments Of Learning

Metacognition is an advanced cognitive function of human being. It has been drawing all fields of psychologists' attention for a long time.Historically, there have been two main lines of research on metacognition, one within developmental psychology and the other within experimental cognitive research. The latter was esteemed as a bridge across laboratory psychology and education realm. By investigating judgments of learning(JOLs), present research explored individual's learning behavior and its consequences under biased JOLs, examined the ways to de-bias JOLs, and discussed the relationship between students' abilities of de-biasing JOLs and learning achievement, trying to enrich the theory of JOLs as well as provide implication for education realm.Three experiments were included in present research. Experiment 1 explored individual's learning behavior and its consequences under biased JOLs by misleading 41 undergraduates to over-estimate their memory. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with 32 under-graduates under-estimate their JOLs, and further examined the influence of restudy and test on regulation of learning behaviors under biased JOLs, trying to explore an effective way to debias the JOLs. Experiment 3 investigated 60 junior school students' study time allocation under biased JOLs. Students with high and low learning achievements were compared to explore the relationship between students' abilities of debiasing JOLs and their learning achievements. The conclusions of present research were as follows:(1)There were significant differences in memory performances between biased(JOLs over-estimate recall performances) and non-biased JOLs conditions. However, no statistical differences in JOLs and restudy rate were found between two conditions. Participants' restudy judgments followed the pattern of their JOLs, which supported the hypothesis that one's learning behaviors were casually related to his JOLs. In addition, learning was not more effect because of metacognitive control under biased JOLs. The differences in recall performaces were not completely compensated.(2)JOLs were significantly lower in biased JOLs condition (JOLs under-estimate recall performances) than non-biased condition, while recall performances of two conditions remain equal, contrarily. study time judgments in biased condition were significantly higher than non-biased condition, which meant learning behaviors followed the pattern of JOLs but not recall performances.(3)Testing and restudy both could play a role in debiasing JOLs, and testing was better in debiasing JOLs than restudy.(4)The relation between junior school students' learning achievements and their abilities of debiasing JOLs was not found. But there were still some differences in debiasing between students with high and low learning achievements. Students with high learning achievements allocated statistically equal study time to biased and nonbiased conditions, while students with low learning achievements allocated more study time to nonbiased condition than biased condition.