The increasing adoption of video-based instruction and digital assessment in higher education has reshaped how students interact with learning materials. However, it also introduces cognitive and behavioral biases that challenge the accuracy of self-perceived learning. This study aims to bridge the gap between perceived and actual learning by investigating how illusion learning—an overestimation of understanding driven by the fluency of instructional media and autonomous study behaviors—affects cognitive performance in university mathematics. Specifically, it examines how students’ performance evolves across Bloom’s cognitive domains (Understanding, Application, and Analysis) from midterm to final assessments. This paper presents a data-driven investigation that combines the theoretical framework of illusion learning, the tendency to overestimate understanding based on the fluency of instructional media, with empirical evidence drawn from a structured and anonymized dataset of 294 undergraduate students enrolled in a Linear Algebra course. The dataset records midterm and final exam scores across three cognitive domains (Understanding, Application, and Analysis) aligned with Bloom’s taxonomy. Through paired-sample testing, descriptive analytics, and visual inspection, the study identifies significant improvement in analytical reasoning, moderate progress in application, and persistent overconfidence in self-assessment. These results suggest that while students develop higher-order problem-solving skills, a cognitive gap remains between perceived and actual mastery. Beyond contributing to the theoretical understanding of metacognitive illusion, this paper provides a reproducible dataset and analysis framework that can inform future work in learning analytics, educational psychology, and behavioral modeling in higher education.

Finding the limits of the metacognitive illusion: Utility of font size variations in learning.

Current research on memory indicates that learning is most effective when it involves spaced retrieval practice of study materials. Here, we investigated whether the benefits of both retrieval practice and spacing can be further boosted when variability is introduced across practice sessions. Across six experiments, participants learned translations of foreign vocabulary, with foreign words embedded in contextual sentences hinting at the meaning of these words. These sentences were then either kept constant or varied from one learning cycle to another. Whenever repeated practice took the form of retrieval from long-term memory with contextual sentences serving as cues (with or without feedback after retrieval attempts), variable sentences led to better learning of the meanings of the embedded foreign words than constant sentences. The benefits of variable retrieval were observed both immediately after study and after a 24-h delay, and they were larger when retrieval practice was spaced rather than massed. However, these benefits were not appreciated by the learners who judged learning to be more effective with constant rather than variable cues. This metacognitive illusion, misaligning the effectiveness of learning and its appraisal by learners, was confirmed in the seventh experiment which focused on learning lecture content. Thus, while spaced retrieval practice employing variable cues clearly produces robust benefits for memory performance, such benefits may be severely underappreciated by the learners.

Two experiments served to examine how people arrive at stimulus-specific prospective judgments about the distracting effects of speech on cognitive performance. The direct-access account implies that people have direct metacognitive access to the cognitive effects of sounds that determine distraction. The processing-fluency account implies that people rely on the processing-fluency heuristic to predict the distracting effects of sounds on cognitive performance. To test these accounts against each other, we manipulated the processing fluency of speech by playing speech forward or backward and by playing speech in the participants’ native or a foreign language. Forward speech and native speech disrupted serial recall to the same degree as backward speech and foreign speech, respectively. However, the more fluently experienced forward speech and native speech were incorrectly predicted to be less distracting than backward speech and foreign speech. This provides evidence of a metacognitive illusion in stimulus-specific prospective judgments of distraction by speech, supporting the processing-fluency account over the direct-access account. The difference between more and less fluently experienced speech was largely absent in the participants’ global retrospective judgments of distraction, suggesting that people gain access to comparatively valid cues when experiencing the distracting effects of speech on their serial-recall performance firsthand.

Research has shown that list composition moderates the effects of encoding manipulations on memory performance; differential memory performance is observed at distinct levels of the independent variable in mixed lists, but not in pure lists. The current study aims to investigate the effect of list composition on predicted and actual memory performance using a semantic lie fabrication manipulation. In Experiment 1, participants either told the truth or fabricated a lie in response to a set of general knowledge questions in a mixed-list design, made memory predictions for each response, and received a free recall test. Experiments 2A and 2B compared the effect of list composition by employing mixed and pure lists, respectively. The results showed that the lie fabrication led to a metacognitive illusion in mixed lists by inducing a crossed double dissociation between memory and metamemory. Participants produced higher memory performance and lower memory predictions for lies than the truth. In contrast, predicted and actual memory performance were similar for truth and lies in pure lists. These findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge on list composition and have implications for situations where individuals need to maintain and remember their fabricated lies.

ABSTRACT Predictions about memory involve the use of metacognition, and metacognition can rely on various cues. The present study investigated metacognition and recall performance when to-be-remembered words differed in font size and emotional valence, to determine what cues are utilised when making metacognitive judgments. Participants were presented with lists of words varying in font size (small and large) and emotional valence (negative and neutral) and were asked to remember as many words as possible for a later recall test while engaging in item-level metacognitive assessments. Specifically, after studying each word, participants either made only judgments of learning (JOLs, Experiment 1) or both JOLs and restudy judgments (Experiment 2). Across experiments, results revealed that while JOLs were sensitive to both font size and emotional valence, restudy judgments were mostly sensitive to emotional valence, and participants’ metacognitive assessments mapped onto memory performance generally for emotional words. Additionally, we found that the effect of font size on metacognition and memory was robust to experience-based learning. Together, the current study extends our understanding of how emotion and font size affect metacognition (monitoring and control) and memory and suggests that when presented with multiple cues, certain diagnostic cues can be harnessed to mitigate metacognitive illusions.

Two experiments serve to examine how people make metacognitive judgments about the effects of task-irrelevant sounds on cognitive performance. According to the direct-access account, people have direct access to the processes causing auditory distraction. According to the processing-fluency account, people rely on the feeling of processing fluency to make heuristic metacognitive judgments about the distracting effects of sounds. To manipulate the processing fluency of simple piano melodies and segments of Mozart’s sonata K. 448, the audio files of the music were either left in their original forward direction or reversed. The results favor the processing-fluency account over the direct-access account: Even though, objectively, forward and backward music had the same distracting effect on serial recall, stimulus-specific prospective metacognitive judgments showed that participants incorrectly predicted only backward music but not forward music to be distracting. The difference between forward and backward music was reduced but not eliminated in global retrospective metacognitive judgments that participants provided after having experienced the distracting effect of the music first-hand. The results thus provide evidence of a metacognitive illusion in people’s judgments about the effects of music on cognitive performance.

The font size effect refers to the metacognitive illusion that larger fonts lead to higher judgments of learning (JOLs) but not better recall. Prior studies demonstrated robust JOL effects of font size under conditions of intra-item relation (i.e., cue-target relatedness within a word pair), even though intra-item relation is a more diagnostic cue than font size. However, it remains an open question whether the JOL effects of font size persist under conditions of inter-item relation (i.e., relations across items on a single-word list). In the current study, we examined the JOL and recall effects of font size when font size and inter-item relation were factorially manipulated in three JOL-recall experiments. Additionally, to manipulate the salience of inter-item relation, we presented related and unrelated lists in a blocked manner in Experiment 1 but in a mixed manner in Experiments 2 and 3. Our results showed that the JOL effects of font size are moderated or eliminated when inter-item relation is manipulated simultaneously with font size. Moreover, the smaller font led to better recall for related lists but not for unrelated lists across all three experiments. Therefore, our results demonstrate that individual cues may not be integrated with equal weight, and there can be a trade-off between item-specific and relational processing during the JOL process. Additionally, highlighting key information with larger fonts may not be optimal with related items.

The positivity effect for metacognitive judgments (judgments of learning, JOLs) of emotional words in recognition memory was shown in older adults, in contrast to younger adults, who typically displayed the emotional salience effect. This is compatible with the socioemotional selection theory, which suggests the presence of a positive stimulus bias in older adults’ cognitive processes. This study examined whether the positivity effect and age-related differences could be extended to a picture study to determine whether the positivity effect in older adults is robust in the metacognitive domain. Younger and older adults studied negative, positive, and neutral pictures, followed by JOLs and then a recognition test that asked participants to judge whether the picture was shown in the studying stage or not. Age-related differences were found not only in recognition memory performance for emotional pictures but also in JOLs and their accuracy. Younger adults showed an emotional salience effect for both memory performance and JOLs. Older adults’ JOLs showed a positivity effect, but their actual memory performance was influenced by emotion, and this inconsistency between metacognitive judgments and memory performance is a metacognitive illusion. These findings support the cross-material replicability of a positivity bias in older adults in the metacognitive domain and suggest that we should be cautioned about the detrimental effects of this metacognitive illusion in older adults. It illustrates an age difference in the effect of emotion on individual metacognitive monitoring ability.

The current study investigated the joint contribution of visual and auditory disfluencies, or distortions, to actual and predicted memory performance with naturalistic, multi-modal materials through three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants watched food recipe clips containing visual and auditory information that were either fully intact or else distorted in one or both of the two modalities. They were asked to remember these for a later memory test and made memory predictions after each clip. Participants produced lower memory predictions for distorted auditory and visual information than intact ones. However, these perceptual distortions revealed no actual memory differences across encoding conditions, expanding the metacognitive illusion of perceptual disfluency for static, single-word materials to naturalistic, dynamic, multi-modal materials. Experiment 3 provided naïve participants with a hypothetical scenario about the experimental paradigm used in Experiment 1, revealing lower memory predictions for distorted than intact information in both modalities. Theoretically, these results imply that both in-the-moment experiences and a priori beliefs may contribute to the perceptual disfluency illusion. From an applied perspective, the study suggests that when audio-visual distortions occur, individuals might use this information to predict their memory performance, even when it does not factor into actual memory performance.

Knowing how students approach learning in higher education contexts is key to promote learning strategies that are effective in the long run. Previous research has concluded that students often use ineffective learning strategies but believe them to be effective—a phenomenon known as metacognitive illusion. In a bid to broaden the perspective on students’ use of learning strategies, this study draws on the notion of self-regulated learning as a theoretical lens. A questionnaire, comprising both open-ended and closed-ended questions, was developed to gather data from 416 engineering students. The questionnaire was geared towards (1) mapping what learning strategies students use in a real-world setting, in real courses, (2) probing their metacognitive awareness of the effectiveness of various learning strategies and (3) investigating why students choose certain learning strategies. We also compared which learning strategies the engineering students chose across programs and types of courses. The findings reveal a complex picture of why students sometimes use seemingly ineffective learning strategies, and we conclude that this is not always due to metacognitive illusion. It is instead often linked to attempts to regulate behaviour, motivation and/or learning context, sometimes in response to the context. This study adds to the current HE research investigating students’ abilities to reflect on, assess and take control of their learning in an effective way, confirming that students need explicit guidance.

Interleaving with other categories of stimuli has been shown to enhance category learning. However, learners, tend to believe that blocking enhances learning, even after their own performance had showed the opposite. The present study explored the contributions of processing fluency (Experiment 1) and beliefs (Experiment 2) to the illusion that blocking enhances category learning. We found that: (a) learners’ performance benefited from interleaving, but their metacognitive judgments were not in conformity with it, (b) the perceived tendency of metacognitive illusion was reduced by inserting an unrelated cartoon image in the blocked presentation condition to decrease fluency, and (c) learners came to the experimental task with a pre-existing belief that the instruction of blocking by topic was superior to intermixing topics. This belief disappeared when learners were offered the theoretical explanation of why interleaving exemplars is more effective. In conclusion, this study revealed that processing fluency and held beliefs were two factors that cause this metacognitive illusion.

Research on everyday attention suggests that frequent interaction with objects often does not benefit memory or metamemory for them. Across three experiments, participants gave confidence judgments and completed eight-alternative forced-choice tests of the US, Canadian, and Mexican flags. In Experiment 1, environmental availability was correlated with confidence for the US flag, despite similar recognition performance at a saturated time point in the US (July 4th) and a neutral time point (August 6th). In Experiment 2, participants that were asked to verbally describe the flags before judging and remembering them were less accurate and more overconfident than were controls. Experiment 3 utilized a draw-study paradigm wherein participants who first drew the flag had reliably more accurate recognition and confidence scores than those who only studied it. These findings illuminate a persistent metacognitive bias, demonstrate a powerful learning intervention, and extend theories of errorful learning by highlighting the role of attention.

Manipulations that induce disfluency during encoding generally produce lower memory predictions for the disfluent condition than for the fluent condition. Similar to other manipulations of disfluency, generating lies takes longer and requires more mental effort than does telling the truth; hence, a manipulation of lie generation might produce patterns similar to other types of fluency for memory predictions. The current study systematically investigates the effect of a lie-generation manipulation on both actual and predicted memory performance. In a series of experiments, participants told the truth or generated plausible lies to general knowledge questions and made item-by-item predictions about their subsequent memory performance during encoding, followed by a free recall test. Participants consistently predicted their memory performance to be higher for truth than for lies (Experiments 1 through 4), despite their typically superior actual memory performance for lies than for the truth (Experiments 1 through 3), producing double dissociations between memory and metamemory. Moreover, lying led to longer response latencies than did telling the truth, showing that generating lies is in fact objectively more disfluent. An additional experiment compared memory predictions for truth and lie trials via a scenario about the lie-generation manipulation used in the present study, which revealed superior memory predictions of truth than of lies, providing proof for a priori beliefs about the effects of lying on predicted memory (Experiment 5). The effects of the current lie-generation manipulation on metamemory are discussed in light of experience-based and theory-based processes on making judgments of learning. Theoretical and practical implications of this experimental paradigm are also considered. (PsycINFO Database Record

Like humans, monkeys can make accurate judgements about their own memory by reporting their confidence during cognitive tasks. Some have suggested that animals use associative learning to make accurate confidence judgements, while others have suggested animals directly access and estimate the strength of their memories. Here we test a third, non-exclusive possibility: perhaps monkeys, like humans, base metacognitive inferences on heuristic cues. Humans are known to use cues like perceptual fluency (e.g. how easy something is to see) when making metacognitive judgements. We tested monkeys using a match-to-sample task in which the perceptual fluency of the stimuli was manipulated. The monkeys made confidence wagers on their accuracy before or after each trial. We found that monkeys' wagers were affected by perceptual fluency even when their accuracy was not. This is novel evidence that animals are susceptible to metacognitive illusions similar to those experienced by humans.

Why are children overconfident? Developmental differences in the implementation of accessibility cues when judging concept learning

Interleaving exemplars of to-be-learned categories-rather than blocking exemplars by category-typically enhances inductive learning. Learners, however, tend to believe the opposite, even after their own performance has benefited from interleaving. In Experiments 1 and 2, the authors examined the influence of 2 factors that they hypothesized contribute to the illusion that blocking enhances inductive learning: Namely, that (a) blocking creates a sense of fluent extraction during study of the features defining a given category, and (b) learners come to the experimental task with a pre-existing belief that blocking instruction by topic is superior to intermixing topics. In Experiments 3-5, the authors attempted to uproot learners' belief in the superiority of blocking through experience-based and theory-based debiasing techniques by (a) providing detailed theory-based information as to why blocking seems better, but is not, and (b) explicitly drawing attention to the link between study schedule and subsequent performance, both of which had only modest effects. Only when they disambiguated test performance on the 2 schedules by separating them (Experiment 6) did the combination of experience- and theory-based debiasing lead a majority of learners to appreciate interleaving. Overall, the results indicate that 3 influences combine to make altering learners' misconceptions difficult: the sense of fluency that can accompany nonoptimal modes of instruction; pre-existing beliefs learners bring to new tasks; and the willingness, even eagerness, to believe that 1 is unique as a learner-that what enhances others' learning differs from what enhances one's own learning. (PsycINFO Database Record

Judgments of learning (JOLs) are sometimes influenced by factors that do not impact actual memory performance. One recent proposal is that perceptual fluency during encoding affects metamemory and is a basis of metacognitive illusions. In the present experiments, participants identified aurally presented words that contained inter-spliced silences (the generate condition) or that were intact, a manipulation analogous to visual generation manipulations. The generate condition produced lower perceptual fluency as assessed by both accuracy and identification latency. Consistent with the perceptual fluency hypothesis, the less fluent, generate condition produced lower JOLs than the intact condition. However, actual memory performance was greater in the generation than intact condition in free recall (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 3). The negative effect of generation on JOLs occurred for both aggregate and item-by-item JOLs, but in the latter case, the positive generation effect in actual memory performance was reduced or eliminated (as also occurs with visual generation tasks; Experiments 2 and 4). Furthermore, the decrease in perceptual fluency produced by the generation manipulation was correlated with the decrease in JOLs for this condition (Experiment 5). The negative effect of generation on JOLs persisted even when participants were warned that the generation condition produces equal or greater memory performance compared to the intact condition (Experiment 6). The results are in accord with the perceptual fluency hypothesis and show that this metamemory illusion is related to objective measures of perceptual difficulty. With regard to actual memory performance, this novel auditory generation manipulation produces results consistent with those produced in the visual modality.

Prior work has shown that judgments of learning (JOLs) are prone to an auditory metacognitive illusion such that loud words are given higher predictions than quiet words despite no differences in recall as a function of auditory intensity. The current study investigated whether judgments of remembering and knowing (JORKs)—judgments that focus participants on whether or not recollective details will be remembered—are less susceptible to such an illusion. In Experiment 1, participants studied single words, making item-by-item JOLs or JORKs immediately after study. Indeed, although increased volume elevated judgement magnitude for both JOLs and JORKs, the effect was significantly attenuated when JORKs were elicited. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and additionally demonstrated that participants making JORKs were less likely than participants making JOLs to choose to restudy quiet words relative to loud words. Taken together, these results suggest that JORKs are impacted less—in terms of both metacognitive monitoring and control—by irrelevant perceptual information than JOLs. More generally, these data support the contention that metacognitive illusions can be attenuated by simply changing the way metacognitive judgments are solicited, an important finding given that subjective experiences guide self-regulated learning.

In this study the authors investigated whether children demonstrated the underconfidence-with-practice (UWP) effect. This effect is a highly robust metacognitive illusion in which adults become underconfident in their memory performance when asked to predict their memory for the same items across multiple study-test trials. One explanation for such underconfidence is the result of adults basing their predictions of future performance on how well they performed on the immediately previous trial and not adjusting their predictions upward for new learning. By contrast, previous research has demonstrated that young children's predictions are influenced minimally by their past performance. Thus, if using this memory-for-past-test heuristic is a major contributor to the UWP effect, young children may not demonstrate it. In two experiments, children were asked to predict their recall of the same pictures across multiple trials. In Experiments 1A and 1B, kindergarteners did not become underconfident with practice, whereas third graders did. In Experiment 2, first-graders did not exhibit the UWP effect even with an additional two trials. Correlational analyses suggested that memory for past test influences 3rd graders' predictions but did not consistently influence younger children's predictions. These findings implicate the role of the memory-for-past-test heuristic in the UWP effect and suggest that this metamemory illusion arises with maturation or schooling experiences.