WHEN PREDICTIONS CREATE REALITY - JUDGMENTS OF LEARNING MAY ALTER WHAT THEY ARE INTENDED TO ASSESS

Nelson and Dunlosky (Psychological Science, July 1991) reported that subjects making judgments of learning (JOLs) can be extremely accurate at predicting subsequent recall performance on a paired-associate task when the JOL task is delayed for a short while after study. They argued that this result is surprising given the results of earlier research, as well as their own current experiment, indicating that JOLs are quite inaccurate when made immediately after study. We note that the delayed-JOL procedure used by Nelson and Dunlosky invited covert recall practice (which was reported by their subjects). Retrieval practice is a well-known determinant of subsequent recall. Accordingly, Nelson and Dunlosky's findings can be explained by the simple assumption that people base delayed JOLs on an assessment of retrieval success, which in turn influences their retrieval success on the subsequent recall test.