Making Judgments of Learning (JOLs) for Others Produces Positive Reactivity

The current study examined judgments of learning (JOL) reactivity in social contexts. Participants studied related and unrelated cue–target word pairs. Half of the participants were asked to predict the likelihood that other people would remember the cue–target pairs on a later memory test, whereas the other half were not. All participants then completed a final cued recall test. The results show that making JOLs for others, like making JOLs for oneself, produces positive reactivity. Specifically, making JOLs for others enhanced memory for related word pairs but not unrelated pairs, supporting the cue-strengthening hypothesis. This study serves as a starting point to examine the influence of making JOLs in social contexts and to understand the impact of cue utilization on JOL reactivity.