First- and second-order metacognitive judgments of semantic memory reports: The influence of personality traits and cognitive styles

In learning contexts, people need to make realistic confidence judgments about their memory performance. The present study investigated whether second-order judgments of first-order confidence judgments could help people improve their confidence judgments of semantic memory information. Furthermore, we assessed whether different personality and cognitive style constructs help explain differences in this ability. Participants answered 40 general knowledge questions and rated how confident they were that they had answered each question correctly. They were then asked to adjust the confidence judgments they believed to be most unrealistic, thus making second-order judgments of their first-order judgments. As a group, the participants did not increase the realism of their confidence judgments, but they did significantly increase their confidence for correct items. Furthermore, participants scoring high on an openness composite were more likely to display higher confidence after both the first- and second-order judgments. Moreover, participants scoring high on the openness and the extraversion composites were more likely to display higher levels of overconfidence after both the first- and second-order judgments. In general, however, personality and cognitive style factors showed only a weak relationship with the ability to modify the most unrealistic confidence judgments. Finally, the results showed no evidence that personality and cognitive style supported first- and second-order judgments differently.     

“I Don't Have Time to Dig Back Through This”: The Role of Semantic Search in Supporting Physician Information Seeking in an Electronic Health Record

The purpose of the study was twofold: to understand how usability affected physicians' performance as they used an electronic health record (EHR) and to ascertain whether use of a semantic search feature would better support physician performance during an information‐seeking task. Participants (n = 10) were asked to complete two search tasks to find pertinent patient information. In the first task, participants located the information as they normally would (through browsing the EHR). In the second task, participants employed a semantic search tool. Upon task completion, participants were interviewed to further understand their perceptions and information‐seeking behavior in an EHR. Statistically significant results confirmed that participants were able to more efficiently navigate through an EHR in terms of time and number of clicks when using the semantic search feature. Moreover, participants were more confident in the accuracy of their answers when using semantic search compared with the browsing method. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Can Gender Stereotypes Facilitate Memory When Elaborative Strategies Are Used?

The present study investigated whether learners would spontaneously draw upon stereotypic prior knowledge when asked to learn factual information about men and/or women while using the elaborative interrogation strategy. The 120 participants (60 male and 60 female) studied 30 facts about men, women or a combination of men and women. Overall, memory for facts about men and women was equivalent; however, elaborations about women contained more stereotypic information than those about men. In cases where stereotypes clarified the relationships within facts, performance improved. Although the themes focussed on many negative stereotypes about women, given the prevalence of stereotypic information, there were benefits from utilising this knowledge. The implications of learners using stereotypic information is discussed.     

Age-Related Effects of Study Time Allocation on Memory Performance in a Verbal and a Spatial Task

Past studies have suggested that study time allocation partially mediates age relations on memory performance in a verbal task. To identify whether this applied to a different material modality, participants ages 20-87 completed a spatial task in addition to a traditional verbal task. In both the verbal and the spatial task, increased age was associated with poorer utilization of study time, suggesting that age differences in study time allocation are qualitatively similar across material modality. Furthermore, age differences in how individuals allocated their study time partially mediated the age relations on memory performance in both tasks, indicating the importance of effective regulation of study time when learning information. Finally, age differences in study time allocation did not appear to be due to differences in awareness of performance. When a subset of participants was asked about their prior performance, awareness of previous performance was not associated with study time allocation on either task. Interestingly, asking participants about their prior performance tended to decrease recall performance. Overall, these results illustrate that how one allocates study time is related to subsequent memory performance in both a verbal and spatial modality, but knowledge about prior performance is not associated with study time utilization, and inquiring about past performance during study may disrupt rather than facilitate learning.     

Age-Related Effects of Study Time Allocation on Memory Performance in a Verbal and a Spatial Task

Past studies have suggested that study time allocation partially mediates age relations on memory performance in a verbal task. To identify whether this applied to a different material modality, participants ages 20–87 completed a spatial task in addition to a traditional verbal task. In both the verbal and the spatial task, increased age was associated with poorer utilization of study time, suggesting that age differences in study time allocation are qualitatively similar across material modality. Furthermore, age differences in how individuals allocated their study time partially mediated the age relations on memory performance in both tasks, indicating the importance of effective regulation of study time when learning information. Finally, age differences in study time allocation did not appear to be due to differences in awareness of performance. When a subset of participants was asked about their prior performance, awareness of previous performance was not associated with study time allocation on either task. Interestingly, asking participants about their prior performance tended to decrease recall performance. Overall, these results illustrate that how one allocates study time is related to subsequent memory performance in both a verbal and spatial modality, but knowledge about prior performance is not associated with study time utilization, and inquiring about past performance during study may disrupt rather than facilitate learning.     

Do specific relevance instructions promote transfer appropriate processing?

This study examined whether specific relevance instructions affect transfer appropriate processing. Undergraduates (n = 52) were randomly assigned to one of three pre-reading question conditions that asked them what-questions, why-questions, or to read for understanding (i.e., control condition). There were no differences in reading time across conditions for sentences targeted by the pre-reading questions. There were three main findings with respect to cued recall. First, participants in the experimental conditions did better on questions that had greater similarity to relevance instructions than questions that had lesser similarity to relevance instructions. Second, participants in the experimental conditions did better on questions that had greater similarity to relevance instructions than the participants in the other conditions on those same questions. Third, participants in the control condition recalled equal amounts of information for both question. The results suggest that specific relevance instructions promote transfer appropriate processing and affect the quality of memory for text.     

Development and Evaluation of an Online, Inquiry-Based Food Safety Education Program for Secondary Teachers and Their Students

ABSTRACT:  Secondary science teachers who integrate food safety (FS) into curricula can provide FS knowledge and skills to youth while reinforcing science skills and concepts. National science education standards and the Biological Science Curriculum Study 5E Inquiry-based Learning Model were used to design an online training, Food Safety FIRST. The training has 3 modules, each with 15 h of web-based instruction, interactive discussion, and tools to conduct experiments or critical evaluation projects. A CD-ROM, web site ( http://foodsafetyfirst.org ), and lab kit were developed to accompany module activities. Seventy-one teachers registered for the program; 38 matched pretest/posttest evaluations were analyzed. When asked their intention to teach FS in the next year, enrollees responded "definitely" (60.5%) or "possibly" (34.2%), reaching potentially 3570 students. Participants found the training very valuable (71.1%) and were significantly more comfortable teaching FS at posttest (3.6 ± 0.5 on a 4-point Likert scale) than at pretest (2.8 ± 1.0; P < 0.0001, n = 35). Self-reported FS practices also improved from pretest (24.8 ± 5.7 out of a possible 35) to posttest (27.7 ± 4.8; P < 0.001, n = 32). On 4-point Likert scales, teachers were confident answering FS questions (3.4); confident that if they did a good job teaching this topic, students would be interested in FS (3.4); and confident FS concepts taught would meet national science standards (3.4). They found the program satisfactory for demonstrating inquiry-based learning (3.8). Most agreed that they would change FS habits (3.2). Using 5-point scales, participants agreed that they felt more able to critically evaluate FS information on the Internet (4.2) and that the training was enjoyable in an online format (4.3).     

The Self‐Reference Effect on Memory in Early Childhood

The self‐reference effect in memory is the advantage for information encoded about self, relative to other people. The early development of this effect was explored here using a concrete encoding paradigm. Trials comprised presentation of a self‐ or other‐image paired with a concrete object. In Study 1, 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children (N = 53) were asked in each trial whether the child pictured would like the object. Recognition memory showed an advantage for self‐paired objects. Study 2 (N = 55) replicated this finding in source memory. In Study 3 (N = 56), participants simply indicated object location. Again, recognition and source memory showed an advantage for self‐paired items. These findings are discussed with reference to mechanisms that ensure information of potential self‐relevance is reliably encoded.     

Changes in Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Instructional Technology Attributed to Completing the ISTE NETS*T Certificate of Proficiency Capstone Program

An evaluation was conducted of teachers’ attitudinal perceptions of their confidence for implementation, stages of innovation adoption, and satisfaction, as a result of participating in the International Society for Technology in Education's National Educational Technology Standards-Teachers (ISTE NETS*T) Certificate of Proficiency Capstone Program. The Self-Efficacy and Stages of Concern instruments provide insight into the attitudinal progression of program participants. Data were collected at pre, mid, post, and follow-up points. Results showed that the capstone program is effective; participants were clearly more confident that they could implement the technology-based/enhanced teaching/learning strategies in their schools; had far fewer concerns about their level of preparedness; were anxious to work with others in their schools; and believed their school/classroom climate was conducive to and supportive of technology integration. Additionally, participants’ principals and/or supervisors were asked to provide data on their perception of the influence the capstone courses had on their teachers.     

The Role of Attention in the Development of Short-Term Memory: Age Differences in the Verbal Span of Apprehension

In previous studies of memory span, participants have attended to the stimuli while they were presented, and therefore have had the opportunity to use a variety of mnemonic strategies. In the main portion of the present study, participants (first- and fourth-grade children, and adults; 24 per age group) carried out a visual task while hearing lists of spoken digits and received a post-list digit recall cue only occasionally, for some lists. Under these conditions, list information presumably must be extracted from a passively held store such as auditory sensory memory. The results suggest that each individual has a core memory capacity limit that can be observed clearly in circumstances in which it cannot be supplemented by mnemonic strategies, and that the capacity limit appears to increase with age during childhood. Other, attention-demanding processes also contribute to memory for attended lists.     

Sex differences in object location memory: The female advantage of immediate detection of changes

Object location memory has been considered the only spatial ability in which females display an advantage over males. We examined sex differences in long-term object location memory. After participants studied an array of objects, they were asked to recall the locations of these objects three minutes later or one week later. Results showed a female advantage only in the three-minute memory task. Additionally, we analyzed sex differences in the ability to recognize both location-exchanged and location-maintained objects. Females were superior to males at recognizing location-exchanged objects after three minutes, but not after one week. Although the one-week group's memory performance for location-exchanged objects was marginally lower, some members of that group recognized the location-maintained objects at higher levels of performance. Therefore, we concluded that the female advantage in object location memory is limited to immediate detection of changes. The relevant evolutionary theories are discussed.     

Realizing that you don't understand: elementary school children's awareness of inconsistencies.

2 factors were proposed to affect awareness of one's comprehension failure: the inferential processing requirements, and the kind of standards against which comprehension is evaluated. These studies investigated elementary school children's awareness of their own comprehension failure when presented with inconsistent information. Study 1 showed that children were more likely to notice explicit than implicit contradictions. However, even 12-year-olds judged as comprehensible a sizable proportion of essays with seemingly obvious inconsistencies. Yet, the children had good probed recall of the information, the logical capacity to draw the inferences, and were not generally reluctant to question the experimenter. In subsequent studies children were (a) asked to repeat sentences in order to guarantee that the 2 inconsistent propositions were concurrently activated in working memory, and (b) warned about the existence of a problem in order to promote more careful evaluation. Taken together, the results suggest that to notice inconsistencies children have to encode and store the information, draw the relevant inferences, retrieve and maintain the (inferred) propositions in working memory, and compare them. Third through sixth graders do not spontaneously carry out those processes that they are capable of carrying out.     

The influence of morphological structure information on the memorization of Chinese compound words

The present study investigated the influence of morphological structure information on the memorization of Chinese subordinate and coordinative compound words using the memory conjunction error paradigm. During the Study Phase, Hong Kong Chinese college students were asked to either judge the word class (Exp. 1, N = 25) or the orthographic structure (Exp. 2, N = 26) of a set of Chinese compound words (Old words). During the Test Phase, the participants were presented with half of the Old words that they had previously seen during the Study Phase and a set of New words, which shared or did not share morphemes with the Old words, and were asked to determine whether they had seen these words in the Study Phase. Half of the New words shared the same compounding structure with the Old words (either subordinate or coordinative) and the other half did not. The participants made more memory errors when both the Old words and the New words were coordinative compounds compared to situations in which the Old words and the New words were subordinate compounds or where the structures of the Old words and the New words were incongruent. The involvement of the processing of morphological structure information during word memorization was supported by the findings. The different characteristics of the two compounding structures were discussed and a morphological structure layer in the mental lexicon was proposed to interpret the results.     

The specific involvement of verbal and visuospatial working memory in hypermedia learning

Many models have hypothesized that multimedia comprehension requires the concurrent processing of verbal and visuospatial information by limited information processing systems. However, in spite of the emphasis devoted to the concurrent processing of verbal and visuospatial information, little research has so far investigated the specific role played by verbal and visuospatial abilities in multimedia comprehension. The present paper aims to study the specific involvement of verbal and visuospatial working memory in multimedia learning. Ninety‐two students (39 boys and 53 girls) from a middle school in a small city in the northeast of Italy, were asked to learn new information on the physical and social geography of Germany from a hypermedium. Participants were also required to perform a reading comprehension test, two short‐term memory tasks, and two working memory tasks, which assessed either verbal or visuospatial memory. The results support the hypothesis that both verbal and visuospatial working memory sub‐components play a role in hypermedium processing, but with specific and distinct functions: the performance in the verbal working memory task was able to predict the semantic knowledge children can derive from hypermedia learning. In contrast, visuospatial working memory seemed to have lower connections to the semantic knowledge children derived from a hypermedia document, whereas its role emerged in the ability to construct a representation of the document structure.     

Memory demands and the development of young children's memory

The primary purposes of this study were to determine the nature of and changes in early memory demands and to assess the relationship between memory demands and memory performance. 10 children at each of 2 ages--30 and 42 months--were observed in their homes for 4 2-hour sessions. Conversations between mothers and children were recorded and mother's memory-demand questions were coded for form and content from these conversations. Question form referred to whether recall or recognition was required and question content to the type of information requested--event or knowledge. Children also participated in 2 long-term memory tasks--production and verification. They were shown a dollhouse and asked to produce the names of objects that would belong in 2 rooms of the house and to verify whether particular miniature replicas of household objects belonged in the rooms. Although memory demands were frequently made, there were few changes between age 2 and 3 in the incidence or types of questions children were asked. At age 3, positive correlations were found between children's production and verification performance and content rather than form of mothers' memory-demand questions. At age 2 no overall relationships were found. Children were retested a year later on memory tasks, and for both age groups memory demands and performance were positively correlated even when initial memory-performance level was controlled. These results, along with other patterns in the data, suggested that mothers' memory demands have an impact on children's memory performance that provides at least partial support for Vygotsky's sociohistorical model of memory development.     

Children's Comparisons of the Recency of Two Events from the Past Year

Research on memory for time has been limited by the difficulty of disentangling several of the fundamentally different processes that contribute to a chronological sense of the past. This study used a developmental approach to isolate one of these processes, impressions of distances in the past. Large samples of children between 3 and 12 years were asked to judge which was longer ago, their birthday or Christmas (and, in one study, Halloween and Thanksgiving). Even children under 6 years of age were able to discriminate the recency of their birthday and Christmas with great accuracy when the events were widely separated and one was within the past several months. The ability to discriminate recency on these scales appears to be a basic property of human memory that changes little with development. Other information about the locations of the events and their relative times of occurrence could only be interpreted correctly by children older than 9 years.     

Gender difference in the effect of daytime sleep on declarative memory for pictures

Objective: To investigate gender difference in the effects of daytime sleep on item and source memories, which are dissociable elements of declarative memory, and the effects of sleep on recollection and familiarity, which are two processes underlying recognition. Methods: Participants saw a series of pictures with either blue or red background, and were then given a pretest for item and source memories. Then males and females respectively were randomly assigned either to a wake or a sleep condition. In the wake condition, participants remained awake until the posttest; in the sleep condition, participants slept for 1 h until awakened and asked to remain awake until the posttest. Results: Daytime sleep contributed to retention of source memory rather than item memory in females, whereas males undergoing daytime sleep had a trend towards increased familiarity. For females, however, neither recollection nor familiarity appeared to be influenced by daytime sleep. Conclusion: The mechanism underlying gender difference may be linked with different memory traces resulting from different encoding strategies, as well as with different electrophysiological changes during daytime sleep.     

A comparison of updating processes in children good or poor in arithmetic word problem-solving

This study examines the updating ability of poor or good problem solvers. Seventy-eight fourth-graders, 43 good and 35 poor arithmetic word problem-solvers, performed the Updating Test used in Palladino et al. [Palladino, P., Cornoldi, C., De Beni, R., and Pazzaglia F. (2002). Working memory and updating processes in reading comprehension. Memory and Cognition, 29, 344–354.]. The participants listened to wordlists, each comprising 12 words referring to objects or animals of different sizes. At the end of each list participants were asked to recall the 3 or 5 words denoting the smallest objects/animals in the list. Results show that poor problem-solvers recalled fewer correct words and made more intrusion errors (recall of non-target words) than good problem-solvers. Results support the hypothesis that the ability to select and update relevant, and suppress irrelevant information, is related to problem-solving, even when the influence of reading comprehension is controlled for. With reference to Baddeley's, and other recent WM models [Miyake, A., and Shah, P. (Eds.), (1999). Models of working memory: Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control. New York: Cambridge University Press.], our results point to the idea that problem-solving relies on the central executive for processing and updating information contained in the problems.