Metacognition and Learning

, Volume 13, Issue 1, pp 1–14 | Cite as

Instructor fluency leads to higher confidence in learning, but not better learning

  • Alexander R. Toftness
  • Shana K. Carpenter
  • Jason Geller
  • Sierra Lauber
  • Madeline Johnson
  • Patrick I. Armstrong
Article
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

Students’ judgements of their own learning often exceed their knowledge on a given topic. One source of this pervasive overconfidence is fluency, the perceived ease with which information is acquired. Though effects of fluency on metacognitive judgments have been explored by manipulating relatively simple stimuli such as font style, few studies have explored the effects of fluency on more complex forms of learning encountered in educational settings, such as learning from lectures. The present study manipulated the fluency of a 31-min video-recorded lecture, and measured its effects on both perceived and actual learning. In the fluent condition, the instructor used non-verbal gestures, voice dynamics, mobility about the space, and appropriate pauses. In the disfluent condition, the same instructor read directly from notes, hunched over a podium, rarely made eye contact, used few non-verbal gestures, spoke in monotone pitch, and took irregular and awkward pauses. Though participants rated the fluent instructor significantly higher than the disfluent instructor on measures of teaching effectiveness and estimated that they had learned more of the material, actual learning between the two groups did not differ as assessed by a memory test over the lecture contents given immediately (Experiment 1) or after a 1-day delay (Experiment 2). This counterintuitive result reveals an “illusion of learning” due to fluency in lecture-based learning, a very common form of instruction.

Keywords

Instructor fluency Metacognition Learning Overconfidence 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access

Notes

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

References

  1. Abrami, P. C., Leventhal, L., & Perry, R. P. (1982). Educational seduction. Review of Educational Research, 52, 446–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Alter, A. L., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2009). Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(3), 219–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Carpenter, S. K., & Olson, K. M. (2012). Are pictures good for learning new vocabulary in a foreign language? Only if you think they are not. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38, 92–101.Google Scholar
  4. Carpenter, S. K., Wilford, M. M., Kornell, N., & Mullaney, K. M. (2013). Appearances can be deceiving: Instructor fluency increases perceptions of learning without increasing actual learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20(6), 1350–1356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Carpenter, S. K., Mickes, L., Rahman, S., & Fernandez, C. (2016). The effect of instructor fluency on students’ perceptions of instructors, confidence in learning, and actual learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 22(2), 161–172.Google Scholar
  6. Dunlosky, J., & Nelson, T. O. (1994). Does the sensitivity of judgments of learning (JOLs) to the effects of various study activities depend on when JOLs occur? Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 545–565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Dunlosky, J., & Tauber, S. K. (Eds.). (2016). The Oxford handbook of Metamemory. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  8. Finn, B., & Metcalfe, J. (2007). The role of memory for past test in the underconfidence with practice effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33, 238–244.Google Scholar
  9. Finn, B., & Tauber, S. K. (2015). When confidence is not a signal of knowing: How students’ experiences and beliefs about processing fluency can lead to miscalibrated confidence. Educational Psychology Review, 27(4), 567–586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Foster, N. L., Was, C. A., Dunlosky, J., & Isaacson, R. M. (2017). Even after thirteen class exams, students are still overconfident: The role of memory for past exam performance in student predictions. Metacognition and Learning, 12(1), 1–19.Google Scholar
  11. Hacker, D. J., Bol, L., Horgan, D. D., & Rakow, E. A. (2000). Test prediction and performance in a classroom context. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 160–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Hartwig, M. K., & Dunlosky, J. (2017). Category learning judgments in the classroom: Can students judge how well they know course topics? Contemporary Educational Psychology, 49, 80–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Koriat, A., & Bjork, R. A. (2005). Illusions of competence in monitoring one’s knowledge during study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 187–194.Google Scholar
  14. Kornell, N., & Hausman, H. (2016). Do the best teachers get the best ratings? Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Magreehan, D. A., Serra, M. J., Schwartz, N. H., & Narciss, S. (2016). Further boundary conditions for the effects of perceptual disfluency on judgments of learning. Metacognition and Learning, 11, 35–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Miller, T. M., & Geraci, L. (2011). Unskilled but aware: Reinterpreting overconfidence in low-performing students. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(2), 502–506.Google Scholar
  17. Mueller, M. L., Tauber, S. K., & Dunlosky, J. (2013). Contributions of beliefs and processing fluency to the effect of relatedness judgments of learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 378–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Mueller, M. L., Dunlosky, J., Tauber, S. K., & Rhodes, M. G. (2014). The font-size effect on judgments of learning: Does it exemplify fluency effects or reflect people’s beliefs about memory? Journal of Memory and Language, 70, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Mueller, M. L., Dunlosky, J., & Tauber, S. K. (2016). The effect of identical word pairs on people’s metamemory judgments: What are the contributions of processing fluency and beliefs about memory? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69, 781–799.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Neath, I. (1996). How to improve your teaching evaluations without improving your teaching. Psychological Reports, 78, 1363–1372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Paik, E. S., & Schraw, G. (2012). Learning with animation and illusions of understanding. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 278–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Perry, R. P., Abrami, P. C., & Leventhal, L. (1979). Educational seduction: The effect of instructor expressiveness and lecture content on student ratings and achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 107–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Reber, R., & Greifeneder, R. (2017). Processing fluency in education: How metacognitive feelings shape learning, belief formation, and affect. Educational Psychologist, 52(2), 84-103.Google Scholar
  24. Rhodes, M. G., & Castel, A. D. (2008). Memory predictions are influenced by perceptual information: Evidence for metacognitive illusions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137(4), 615–625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Rhodes, M. G., & Castel, A. D. (2009). Metacognitive illusions for auditory information: Effects on monitoring and control. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16(3), 550–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Sanchez, C. A., & Khan, S. (2016). Instructor accents in online education and their effect on learning and attitudes. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 32, 494–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. Serra, M. J., & Dunlosky, J. (2010). Metacomprehension judgements reflect the belief that diagrams improve learning from text. Memory, 18(7), 698–711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Serra, M. J., & Magreehan, D. A. (2016). Instructor fluency correlates with students’ ratings of their learning and their instructor in an actual course. Creative Education, 7(8), 1154–1165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Spooren, P., Brockx, B., & Mortelmans, D. (2013). On the validity of student evaluation of teaching: The state of the art. Review of Educational Research, 10, 1–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Ware Jr., J. E., & Williams, R. G. (1975). The Dr. Fox effect: a study of lecturer effectiveness and ratings of instruction. Journal of Medical Education, 50, 149–156.Google Scholar
  31. Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S. J. (1997). “How'm I doing?” problems with student ratings of instructors and courses. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 29(5), 12–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Williams, R. G., & Ware, J. E., Jr. (1976). Validity of students’ ratings of instruction under different incentive conditions: A further study of the Dr. Fox effect. Journal of Educational Psychology, 68, 48–56.Google Scholar
  33. Williams, R. G., & Ware Jr., J. E. (1977). An extended visit with Dr. fox: Validity of student satisfaction with instruction ratings after repeated exposures to a lecture. American Educational Research Journal, 14, 449–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Yue, C. L., Castel, A. D., & Bjork, R. A. (2013). When disfluency is—and is not—a desirable difficulty: The influence of typeface clarity on metacognitive judgments and memory. Memory & Cognition, 41(2), 229–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Alexander R. Toftness
    • 1
  • Shana K. Carpenter
    • 1
  • Jason Geller
    • 1
  • Sierra Lauber
    • 1
  • Madeline Johnson
    • 1
  • Patrick I. Armstrong
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of PsychologyIowa State UniversityAmesUSA

Personalised recommendations