Another look at the contribution of motoric fluency to metacognitive monitoring.

Abstract

Recent evidence indicates that fluent motor interactions with studied information can increase confidence in how well that information will be later remembered, as measured by judgements of learning (JOLs). However, it remains unclear whether such metacognitive assessments are based on experienced motoric fluency or on explicit, analytic beliefs regarding the mnemonic impact of the experimental manipulations used to enhance fluency. Here, we introduce a new approach to examine the extent to which experience-based processes alone underlie this effect by manipulating motoric fluency outside of participants' awareness. Across two experiments, we examined typing speed for both real-word and nonword verbal stimuli following a training phase in which participants typed items consisting of a restricted subset of letters. Despite faster typing times (i.e., greater motoric fluency) for new items comprised of the same subset of letters used during training, we found no evidence that these items were perceived as more memorable. For real words, linear mixed-effect model analyses at the item level relating typing speed and JOLs also revealed no evidence that motoric fluency increased perceived memorability. Similar analyses conducted for nonwords did, however, reveal a modest positive relation between these constructs. Together, these findings suggest that the contribution of motoric fluency to metacognitive monitoring in the absence of analytic beliefs is minimal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).