Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Jodi Price

Committee Member

Aurora Torres

Committee Member

Jeffrey Neuschatz

Subject(s)

Metacognition, Cognition, Perception

Abstract

Prior research has shown that people perceive items in a larger font size as being more memorable than items in a smaller font size. This perception leads to higher judgments of learning (JOLs; i.e., confidence ratings regarding the likelihood of recalling an item) for larger font size items than smaller font size items. Yet other research has shown that people recalled more when the information was presented in a smaller font than when it was presented in a larger font size. The present study examined if there are boundary conditions of font sizes affecting JOLs and actual recall performance. As we expected, the results show that JOLs increased as a function of the size category. The results also show that font size impacted recall performance such that items in the Smallest size category were recalled at a higher rate than items in the other three font size categories.

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