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The interaction between feedback timing, confidence, and error correction in episodic memory

Date

2011

Authors

Sitzman, Danielle Marie, author
Rhodes, Matthew G., advisor
Clegg, Benjamin A., committee member
Tracy, Brian L., committee member

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Abstract

Prior work has not provided clear conclusions regarding whether immediate feedback or delayed feedback leads to better retention of material. However, these theories have failed to consider how a person's confidence in their response may interact with the timing of feedback. The current experiments examined how the influence of confidence and the processing of feedback varies as a function of feedback timing. In experiment 1, participants studied a list of word pairs and were given a cued recall test. After the test, participants either received immediate feedback, delayed feedback, or no feedback. Two days later, participants returned to complete another cued recall test for the word-pairs they learned during session 1. Participants receiving feedback performed better on the final test than participants who did not receive feedback, yet the timing of the feedback did not lead to differences in accuracy or confidence ratings. The second experiment followed the same procedure as experiment 1, with the exception that participants were allowed to control the amount of time they spent processing their feedback. Consistent with experiment 1, there were no differences between immediate and delayed feedback in terms of accuracy or confidence ratings on test 2. In addition, participants spent more time processing feedback when their answers were incorrect rather than correct. However, the timing of feedback did not impact feedback processing time. Overall, while feedback is beneficial for both memory and metamemory accuracy, the timing of feedback does not appear to differentially affect performance.

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Subject

confidence
metamemory
memory
feedback

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