Hypercorrection of High Confidence Errors in Lexical Representations

Abstract

Memory errors associated with higher confidence are more likely to be corrected than errors made with lower confidence, a phenomenon called the hypercorrection effect. This study investigated whether the hypercorrection effect occurs with phonological information of lexical representations. In Experiment 1, 15 participants performed a Japanese Kanji word-reading task, in which the words had several possible pronunciations. In the initial task, participants were required to read aloud each word and indicate their confidence in their response; this was followed by receipt of visual feedback of the correct response. A hypercorrection effect was observed, indicating generality of this effect beyond previous observations in memories based upon semantic or episodic representations. This effect was replicated in Experiment 2, in which 40 participants performed the same task as in Experiment 1. When the participant's ratings of the practical value of the words were controlled, a partial correlation between confidence and likelihood of later correcting the initial mistaken response was reduced. This suggests that the hypercorrection effect may be partially caused by an individual's recognition of the practical value of reading the words correctly.