The Feeling of Going: Judgments of Learning (JOLs) for Maps and Directions

The Feeling of Going: Judgments of Learning (JOLs) for Maps and Directions

Spatial metamemory is an unexplored topic, despite our knowledge of spatial memory. In the current study, Judgments of learning (JOLs) for maps (Experiment I ) and verbal directions (Experiment 2) were examined. The tasks were chosen to mirror real-world spatial learning situations. In both studies, participants studied for 60 seconds a map or a set of directions from one place to another. Following study, participants assessed JOLs on a O to 100 scale immediately after the map (Experiment 1 ) or the directions (Experiment 2) were removed. Participants then wrote or drew the directions from one place to another. These JOLs are immediate JOLs (Nelson & Dunlosky,1991), which tend to be low in accuracy (.3 to .4). For both maps and directions, the gamma correlations were above .8. Calibration ofthe magnitude of the judgments also closely matched perfonnance. Various explanations for the strong gamma correlations are given.