Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001 Avenue McGill College, Montréal, QC, H3A 1G1, Canada.
Department of Psychology and Human Neuroscience Institute, Cornell University, Montréal, Canada.
Mem Cognit. 2023 Oct;51(7):1702-1713. doi: 10.3758/s13421-023-01419-1. Epub 2023 Mar 30.
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.
字号大小效应是指一种元认知错觉，即较大的字号会导致更高的学习判断（JOL），但不会带来更好的回忆。先前的研究表明，即使字号大小是比项目内关系更具诊断性的线索，但在项目内关系条件下，字号大小仍会产生强烈的 JOL 效应，即词对中提示与目标的相关性。然而，字号大小的 JOL 效应是否在项目间关系条件下（即在单字列表上的项目之间的关系）持续存在，这仍是一个悬而未决的问题。在本研究中，我们通过三个 JOL 回忆实验，在因子上操纵字号大小和项目间关系，检验了字号大小的 JOL 和回忆效应。此外，为了操纵项目间关系的显著性，我们在实验 1 中以块的方式呈现相关和不相关的列表，而在实验 2 和 3 中以混合的方式呈现。我们的结果表明，当同时操纵字号大小和项目间关系时，字号大小的 JOL 效应会受到调节或消除。此外，在所有三个实验中，对于相关列表，较小的字号会导致更好的回忆，但对于不相关列表则并非如此。因此，我们的结果表明，个体线索可能不会以相同的权重进行整合，并且在 JOL 过程中可能存在项目特定处理和关系处理之间的权衡。此外，用较大的字号突出显示关键信息对于相关项目来说可能并不是最佳选择。
