Students don’t always know what they’re hearing is true. The memory effects of this uncertainty of whether information is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ when encountering material is not entirely known, however. Uncertainty could encourage learners to engage in deep processing, producing better learning of correct information. Alternatively, uncertainty could erode trust and undermine learning of correct information. Drs. Karen Arcos, Hannah Hausman, and Benjamin C. Storm had participants learn history statements in one of three conditions: passive reading of all correct information, passive reading of true and false information labeled as such, and a “truth-checking” condition, in which the same true and false information was presented but participants had to mark the accuracy of each statement themselves. Across 3 experiments, the results were mixed: In some cases but not all cases, truth-checking improved memory for the true statements. However, participants in the truth-checking condition were also sometimes more likely to misremember false information as ‘true’ and learning took significantly longer overall. It seems as if the costs of truth-checking might outweigh the benefits.

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Retrieval practice–or answering practice questions–can dramatically enhance learning compared to more passive study methods like rereading. But what if study guide questions or practice exams aren’t available? Teachers and professors often suggest students should write their own questions and quiz themselves to prepare for exams. But does this method actually improve learning? To test this question, Drs. Sarah J. Myers, Hannah Hausman, and Matthew G. Rhodes had participants read informational texts, then review the material by answering experimenter-provided questions, writing and answering their own questions, or rereading the material. Contrary to predictions, the researchers found that creating and answering one’s own questions did not improve, and sometimes impaired learning, compared to answering provided review questions or rereading the texts. Although practice testing is an effective learning strategy, we encourage instructors and material developers to provide high-quality review questions for students.

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Does thinking about how well you’ve understood what you’re reading help you learn? Previous research has found that making judgments of learning (JOLs) can directly improve learning of simple materials in the lab like lists words. Drs. Hannah Hausman and Veit Kubik tested whether this effect extends to more realistic materials, such as the instructional texts students read in school. The answer was no–participants learned just as much from reading a text about geology regardless of whether or not they ended their study session by judging how well they understood different concepts from the reading. This surprising new finding has practical implications for teachers and students and theoretical implications for how making metacognitive judgments affects memory.

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