Utilization of Metacognitive Judgments in the Allocation of Study during Multitrial Learning

We contrasted several ways that an individual's judgments of learning (JOLs) can be utilized when allocating additional study ("restudy") during the learning of Swahili-English translation equivalents. The findings demonstrate how metacognitive monitoring can be utilized to benefit multitrial learning. Computer-controlled allocation of restudy based on people's JOLs was equivalent to most people's own allocation of restudy (indicating that the computer algorithm can provide a sufficient account of people's allocation of restudy) and was more effective than a computer-controlled allocation based on normative performance (indicating that people's metacognitive monitoring of idiosyncratic knowledge has functional utility in causal chains for learning).