The Effects of Distraction on Confidence Rating Reactivity During Cued-Recall

<p>One of the current areas of research into memory accuracy improvement focuses on the concept of <em>reactivity</em> or changes to behavior that occur outside of the manipulated independent variables which may be attributable to biases or expectations of participants (Adair, 1984; Saretsky, 1972). Although reactivity is often interpreted as a threat to internal validity, research using metacognitive judgments has demonstrated that asking individuals to predict future performance at study can promote memory on subsequent tests of cue-target word pairs. An important question is whether these positive reactivity effects are specific to metacognitive judgments provided at encoding, or whether positive reactivity effects operate more generally and manifest when judgments are provided at test. One such judgment type, confidence ratings (CRs), ask individuals to estimate the likelihood that a retrieved item is correct. In a pilot dataset, providing CRs produced positive reactivity effects versus a no-CR control. The current experiment then tested whether CR reactivity effects reflect enhanced monitoring by evaluating CR reactivity patterns under conditions of full or divided attention. Compared to full attention, divided attention was expected to reduce test-based memory monitoring, thereby reducing or eliminating reactivity patterns relative to a no-CR control group. However, results showed no significant reactivity effects, either positive or negative, between groups.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2025

Author dc:creator

• Morehead, Amelia G

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mark Huff
• Lin Agler
• Andrew Huebert

• metacognition
• memory
• cued-recall
• distraction
• confidence
• Cognition and Perception
• Cognitive Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/1123

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-2218