In day-to-day functioning, people rely on both memory and knowledge

In day-to-day functioning, people rely on both memory and knowledge of that memory, referred to as metamemory. For example, a person often cannot immediately recall a name upon meeting someone, but they feel that they know it. This feeling is the result of monitoring memory. Because of this feeling-of-knowing (FOK), most people will continue to search their memory for this name. Once a name is generated, people then monitor and decide if they are confident enough to use that name.

Memory monitoring involves evaluating the ongoing progress of any aspect of memory. Experiments that evaluate memory monitoring typically have individuals make subjective judgments about their memory at various stages of learning and recall. Participants are asked a series of questions. After each question that they answer, they are asked to provide a retrospective confidence (RC) judgment, rating the likelihood that their response is accurate. When participants do not answer a question, they are asked for their prospective FOK judgment, assessing whether they nonetheless feel they do know the answer (for example because they think they may be able to remember it at some point in the future).

Perhaps predictably, RC judgments are highly correlated with actual knowledge of a topic. FOK judgments, however, correlate rather weakly—albeit positively—with actual knowledge. While there are some instances where the FOK is the result of a momentary inability to recall something[/color], more often than not the FOK stems from the sense that one should know something, for example because the field is familiar.


Research has resulted in a general consensus that, when monitoring memory, individuals infer whether a particular response will be, or has been, remembered based on the inputs that are readily available. However, the particular inputs used differ depending on when memory is assessed. Prospective FOK judgments are thought to be based on familiarity of the cue, accessibility of information about the memory, or a combination of the two. In contrast, it is widely accepted that RC judgments are based on the memory-retrieval experience—that is, the “on-line” experience of directly retrieving some previously studied item.

1. The author uses the term “on-line” (Highlighted)at the end of the last paragraph in order to:

A. emphasize the importance of readily available inputs for monitoring memory.
B. enhance the understanding of a major difference between RC judgments and FOK judgments.
C. show how similar RC judgments are to the experience of retrieving data from a computer online.
D. highlight the importance of when a memory is assessed in determining the reliability of an RC judgment.
E. clarify the weaknesses inherent in the process for forming FOK judgments.


2. Which of the following best describes the role of the highlighted portion in the 3rd paragraph?

A. It is used to support the idea that RC judgments are strongly correlated with knowledge of a topic.
B. It is used to emphasize why FOK judgments, when compared to RC judgments, are also positively correlated with actual knowledge.
C. It is used to explain why the correlation with actual knowledge for FOK judgments is not as strong as the correlation with actual knowledge for RC judgments.
D. It is used to emphasize the difference between a momentary inability to recall something and actual knowledge of a topic.
E. It is used to support the notion that RC judgments should be used more often to assess recall of information than FOK judgments.


3. According to the passage, an FOK judgment is normally made by experimental subjects

A. before questions are posed to them.
B. after each question.
C. after questions they are unable to answer.
D. after providing an answer to a question.
E. after the answers to all the questions are revealed.


4. Based on the information in the passage, if a person has an FOK that proves to be an accurate assessment of actual knowledge, he or she most likely

A)will quickly give up on attempting to answer the question.
B)is familiar with the field but not the individual piece of information.
C)overestimates how much knowledge he or she really has.
D)is suffering from a temporary inability to recall information.
E)will give an unreliable RC judgment for the same topic.


5. According to the passage, which of the following is true of feeling-of-knowing?

A. It its not correlated with actual knowledge.
B. It is more strongly correlated with actual knowledge than is retrospective confidence.
C. It causes people to stop searching their memory for someone's name.
D. It is considered by researchers to be the best possible predictor of actual knowledge.
E. It is positively correlated with actual knowledge.


6. According to the passage, FOK judgments and RC judgments differ in all of the following ways EXCEPT that

A. they are elicited experimentally under different conditions.
B. one is more accurate than the other.
C. they involve inferences based on different clues.
D. one is subjective and the other is objective.
E. they assess knowledge at different points in the recall process.


7. Which of the following, if true, would support the author's claims about the inputs associated with memory monitoring?

A. Prospective FOK judgments are often associated with high levels of brain activity around the memory retrieval centers of the brain.
B. Individuals who were asked the same question on subsequent days reported higher FOK - even if they didn't know the answer - than did individuals who hadn't heard the question before.
C. Individuals report high RC if the memory accessed to answer a question had a large amount of accessible information associated with it.
D. The longer the time period between when an individual studies a topic and when he or she is asked about it, the lower the FOK judgment associated with that question.
E. Brain scans of individuals performing FOK and RC judgments show that the two processes occur in different areas of the brain.


8. Based on the information in the passage, in which of the following situations would a RC judgment occur?

A. A shopper considers whether the PIN he is about to enter is the correct one.
B. An individual studying for an exam reviews his notes to see what he needs to review.
C. A shopper tries to remember the price at which a particular item was advertised.
D. A test taker reviews her test for potential calculation mistakes before turning it in.
E. An individual tries to remember a password for an online application.