Metamemory cues and monitoring accuracy: Judging what you know and what you will know.

Three experiments examined metamemory for categorized lists of items. Judgments of learning (JOLs) were obtained from college students either immediately after study or following a brief (at least 30-s) delay. In contrast to past findings (e.g., T.O. Nelson & J. Dunlosky, 1991), no advantage was found for delayed JOLs in Experiment 1, using a standard, prediction-based metamemory cue. In Experiment 2, knowledge-based judgments were elicited, and delayed JOL accuracy improved significantly. The relative fficacy of 4 different metamemory cues was examined in Experiment 3. An interaction between the timing and phrasing of JOL cues was detected: Delayed JOLs were more accurate than immediate JOLs only when knowledge-based cues were used. These results are interpreted in A. Koriat's (1997) cue-utilization framework for JOL accuracy, and they show that the phrasing of metamemory cues can have a substantial impact on monitoring accuracy. The role of memory monitoring and control in education has been studied with increasing interest in recent years (Hacker, Dunlosky, & Graesser, 1998). During exam preparation, for ex-ample, students must accurately assess their current state of knowl-edge to effectively regulate their ongoing learning. Students who