The effect of timing and stimulus properties on metacognitive judgments

The present thesis tested the effect of partial information along with the effect of timing on feeling of knowing (FOK) judgments to reach at a comprehensive explanation for FOK strength and accuracy. In the present study, effects of partial information was conceptualized based on Koriat (1994)'s argument in which partial information is something that comes to mind in thinking about the target and is the 'glimpse' of the information related to the target. We experimentally manipulated the levels of partial information by using words that had either weak or strong partial information at the conceptual level. In order to accomplish this we used words with either small or large association sets and either weak or strong primary associates. Moreover, we also manipulated whether FOK judgments were given under time constraints or in a self-paced time. In three successive experiments we found that people's FOK judgments were affected by both timing and level of partial information manipulations. In particular, participants gave higher FOK judgments for correctly recalled trials when they had enough time to evaluate on their judgments regardless of the association level of the words. However, for incorrectly recalled items higher judgments were given for the words with strong levels of association and in the self-paced time conditions. Results of FOK accuracy did not differ across timing manipulation and word type.