Metamemory: The monitoring and control of memory

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We are increasingly exposed to larger amounts of information than we could possibly be expected to remember. How can we know, when we first encounter information, whether we will or even should remember it later? The long-term goal of my proposed research program is to gain a greater understanding of factors that influence memory monitoring and control processes: metamemory. In the examination of metamemory, my first line of research will examine how emotion influences monitoring. Emotional information (e.g., recounting a natural disaster, crime, or celebration) is often remembered better than neutral information, but what we do not know is how the feeling that emotional information is memorable relates to actual memory performance for individual items. The goal is to examine the extent to which the emotional content of items and overall study context influence our ability to accurately predict memory performance. In examining metamemory control, this research will use an adaptation of intentional forgetting. Rather than focusing on how people try to learn information, the plan is to focus on how people try to not learn information that is unimportant. In the directed forgetting paradigm, participants study items and are cued to remember some items but to forget others, with memory tests generally showing better performance for the to-be-remembered items. This is evidence of metamemory control over encoding processes. This research will examine how the source of the information can influence whether or not we can intentionally forget, and how retrieving information from memory can potentially override our memory control processes. With the proliferation of information on the internet, it is important to recognize that the credibility of the source of the information that we encounter is central for deciding whether we should remember something. The proposed research program will contribute to advancing our understanding of metamemory processes, and ultimately to our understanding of memory in general.