The Context Dependent Effect On Judgments Of Learning

The metacognitive monitoring process has always been the research priority in the field of metacognition at home and abroad.Throughout the previous research,researchers have mainly focused on the influencing factors,internal mechanism and cue utilization of metacognitive monitoring.Fewer researchers have focused on the context factors influencing the process of metacognitive monitoring.The "context dependent effect" theory is that when the situation of encoding is consistent with the situation of extraction,which will facilitate the extraction of the encoded information.The theory has been confirmed by a large number of study in the field of cognition research.Hanczakowski have found that feeling of knowing and judgments of confidence in the process of metacognition monitoring are affected by context factors,which indicates that the process of metacognition is also affected by context factors.These researches undoubtedly bring enlightenment to the topic of “situation impact metacognition”.This study focuses on the context dependent effect on judgments of learning in the context of Chinese learning and further exploring the internal mechanisms and limitation of the context dependent effect on JOLs.The classical RJR paradigm was adopted of this study.In the present study,there are four experiments.Using Chinese words as learning materials examined whether different types of context affected predictions in Experiment 1.The results showed an effect of context dependent on the result of memory and JOLs which indicated that the learning situation was an effective cue on JOLs.In a follow-up experiment,the study was to explore how the cue influenced predictions.In Experiment 2,we used within-subject design of two-factor to investigate the role of perceptual fluencyand manipulating context location of upright/updown as the different levels of perceptual fluency.The JOLs revealed no significant difference in the condition of perceptual nonfluency.The result shows that perceptual fluency plays an important role in the context-dependent effect on JOLs.Based on Experiment 2,Experiment 3a and 3b further investigated the limiting conditions for perceptual fluency.In Experiment 3a,we made context variable as the between-subject factor that its aim was to make subjects only experience one level of fluency.The results showed that JOLs revealed no difference between fluency level and nonfluency level,suggests that perceptual fluency plays a role in the context dependent effect on JOLs with the condition of “Experiential relativity”.In Experiment 3b,We used within-subject design of two-factor and another variable of related words was introduced.The results showed that context dependent effect on JOLs disappeared in the condition of high related words.This indicates that the “Saliently cue” is another limiting condition during the perceptual fluency plays a role in the context dependent effect on JOLs.Conclusions were as follows:(1)The context dependent effect on JOLs also occurs in the background of Chinese learning;(2)Perceptual fluency contributes to the context dependent effects on JOLs;(3)perceptual fluency plays a role in the context dependent effect on JOLs with the limiting condition of “Experiential relativity” and “Saliently cue”.