Delayed Judgments of Learning Are Associated With Activation of Information From Past Experiences: A Neurobiological Examination

Research in metacognition suggests that the information people use to predict their memory performance can vary depending on the contexts in which they make their predictions. For example, if people judge their memories after a delay from initial encoding, they may be more likely to use retrieved information about the past encoding experience than if they judged memories immediately after encoding. Although this seems intuitive, past behavioral and neuroimaging work has not tested whether delayed memory judgments are more strongly coupled with information about past experiences than immediate memory judgments. We scanned participants using functional MRI while they encoded paired associates and made predictions about their future memory performance either immediately after encoding or after a delay. Consistent with the hypothesis that people use retrieved information about past experiences to inform delayed memory judgments, our results showed that activation patterns associated with past experience were more strongly coupled with delayed memory judgments than with immediate ones.