Abstract: This experiment investigated the factors influencing the monitoring judgment of metamemory under recognition condition. Subjects were 18 undergraduates (9 women, 9 men). Chinese word pairs were used as experimental materials. It was a 2×3 within subjects factorial design. The first factor was presentation time (500 ms and 1000 ms); the second factor was the number of study trials (0, 1 and 2). The experiment included four phases: (1) Pre memorization phase: presenting 80 words on a computer screen randomly for different presentation time (40 words by 500ms, 40 words by 1000ms. Subjects were not instructed to memorize them. (2) Memorizing phase. (3) Monitoring judgment of metamemory phase: subjects were instructed to rank monitoring judgment on the rating scale (0～100) to predict that how likely that they were able to recognize a word that they had or had not memorized. (4) A criterion test (forced choice recognition test with four items). Results (ratio of correct responses and response time) of the test were recorded by computer. The results showed that the ratings of monitoring judgment of metamemory under the condition of longer presentation time were higher than the ratings under the condition of shorter presentation time. The ratings under the condition of more study trials were higher than those under the condition of fewer study trials. The ratings under condition in which there was instruction to memorize were higher than those under the condition in which no such instruction was given. It was shown that the ratings of monitoring judgment of metamemory were correlated with the strength of the memory trace (or strength of activation of items) in recognition memory.

Key words: recognition, monitoring judgment of metamemory, activating strength