Undorf Monika, Erdfelder Edgar
a Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences , University of Mannheim , Mannheim , Germany.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2013;66(10):2060-72. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2013.777751. Epub 2013 Apr 10.
The fluency of information encoding has frequently been discussed as a major determinant of predicted memory performance indicated by judgements of learning (JOLs). Previous studies established encoding fluency effects on JOLs. However, it is largely unknown whether fluency takes effect above and beyond the effects of item difficulty. We therefore tested whether encoding fluency still affects JOLs when numerous additional cues indicating the difficulty of an item are available as well. In three experiments, participants made JOLs for another participant while observing his or her self-paced study phase. However, study times were swapped in one experimental condition, so that items with short study times (indicating high fluency) were presented for long durations, whereas items with long study times (indicating low fluency) were presented for short durations. Results showed that both item difficulty and encoding fluency affected JOLs. Thus, encoding fluency in itself is indeed an important cue for JOLs that does not become redundant when difficulty information is available in addition. This observation lends considerable support to the ease-of-processing hypothesis.
信息编码的流畅性经常被作为学习判断（JOLs）所表明的预测记忆表现的一个主要决定因素来讨论。以往的研究确立了编码流畅性对学习判断的影响。然而，在项目难度的影响之外流畅性是否起作用在很大程度上尚不清楚。因此，我们测试了在有许多表明项目难度的额外线索时，编码流畅性是否仍然会影响学习判断。在三个实验中，参与者在观察另一名参与者的自定进度学习阶段时对其学习判断。然而，在一种实验条件下学习时间被调换了，这样学习时间短（表明高流畅性）的项目呈现时间长，而学习时间长（表明低流畅性）的项目呈现时间短。结果表明项目难度和编码流畅性都影响学习判断。因此，编码流畅性本身确实是学习判断的一个重要线索，当有难度信息时它不会变得多余。这一观察结果为加工流畅性假说提供了相当大的支持。
