The role of self-referencing on feeling of knowing judgments

Abstract

The aim of the present thesis was to investigate the effect of self-referencing (SR) on feeling of knowing (FOK) judgments. Feeling of knowing (FOK) is a prospective memory judgment in which participants make predictions about the likelihood of future recognition for unrecalled materials. According to the accessibility model, FOK judgments are closely related to memory performance (Koriat, 1993). Since relating information to the self is one of the factors enhancing memory performance, we hypothesized that SR at encoding will produce better memory and FOK performance compared to deep processing measured by an associative condition. In Experiment 1, participants incidentally encoded 90 word pairs in the SR and associative conditions. After the retention interval, they completed cued recall, FOK rating and recognition phases. We found no significant difference between SR and associative conditions in terms of memory performance and FOK judgments. In Experiment 2, we replaced the associative condition with a common judgment condition, in which participants judged the frequency of occurrence of memoranda. These types of judgments have been considered to reflect deep processing. Our results showed that SR at encoding as opposed to the common judgment condition, resulted in better memory, higher FOK accuracy and increased recollective experience.