Metacognitive Judgments and Syllogistic Reasoning

Abstract

In this study we examined the relationship between metacognitive judgments and accuracy in syllogistic reasoning. In three experiments, the participants made different types of metacognitive judgments: confidence judgments, judgments of performance and judgments of task difficulty. The confidence judgments were made (a) after producing a conclusion that logically followed from given premises (Experiment 1) and (b) after choosing the conclusion from a list of choices (Experiment 2), and judgments of performance were made (c) after a quick overview of a problem (Experiment 3). Judgments of difficulty were made before (Experiment 3) and after (Experiment 2) solving syllogistic problems. A total of 166 psychology students participated in the experiments. In all three experiments, participants were generally overconfident. The relative accuracy of judgments was generally low, with the exception of Experiment 1. The results do not indicate clearly that judgments made after solving tasks are more accurate than judgments made before solving them. The additional analysis by items showed positive correlations between different metacognitive judgments but lower correlations between judgments and reasoning accuracy, and negative correlations between metacognitive judgments and response times.

Keywords

• metacognition
• syllogistic reasoning
• judgment accuracy