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Metacognition and Confidence : Mood, Individual Differences, Developmental and Social Aspects

Author

  • Anna-Carin Jonsson

Summary, in English

This dissertation investigates the realism in people's confidence judgments. Study I investigated whether mood influences the confidence people have in their event memory. However, there were no significant differences in the realism of the participants' confidence judgments between conditions (elated and neutral). This study concluded that moderate levels of elation might not influence the realism in confidence judgments. In Study II the stability and variability in the realism of confidence judgments over time, content domain and gender were investigated. Two tests, WORD (word knowledge)and DTK (logical/spatial ability), from the Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test were administered on three occasions. The results showed that there were stable individual differences over time and domain in the participants' confidence judgments. No gender differences were found and no effect was found of the cognitive style Need-for-Cognition, NfC. Study III investigated children's (11-12 year old) confidence judgments of answers to questions on their episodic memories. Four different confidence scales were tested; the numeric scale, the picture scale, the line scale and the written scale. The four scales showed no difference for the children's confidence judgments. Further, the children were more overconfident than adults who had used the same material in recent studies. Also, the children's frequency judgments showed overestimation. Finally, Study IV investigated how social feedback influence children's (12 year old)confidence judgments (the same material as in Study III was used). The between-subject factor related to whether the feedback was given by a teacher or a classmate and the within-subject factor concerned type of feedback; confirmatory or disconfirmatory feedback on both correct and incorrect answers. The results showed that the children were overconfident independent of what kind of feedback they recieved and no effect of the source of the feedback was found. However, confirmatory feedback resulted in worse realism in the children's confidence judgments than disconfirmatory feedback. The children's frequency judgments again showed overestimation. In summary, the results in this thesis show that individual differences and developmental aspects should be added to the five factors that were argued by Allwood and Granhag (1999) to influence confidence judgments; time, feedback, contextual, motivational and experience within the domain.

Publishing year

2005

Language

English

Publication/Series

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Personality and Individual Differences, Applied Cognitive Psychology

Document type

Dissertation

Publisher

Department of Psychology, Lund University

Topic

  • Psychology

Keywords

  • Psychology
  • Developmental
  • Eyewitness memory
  • Individual Differences
  • Calibration
  • Realism in confidence judgments
  • Metacognition
  • Psykologi

Status

Published

Supervisor

  • Carl Martin Allwood

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISBN: 91-628-6387-8

Defence date

28 January 2005

Defence time

13:15

Defence place

Kulturens auditorium, Lund

Opponent

  • Anders Biel (professor)