Effects of Attitudes Toward Remembering on Metamemory and Memory Performance in College Students

As modern technology enables instant access to virtually limitless information, students may perceive memorization of information as lacking in practical importance. The current study investigated the relationship between attitudes toward remembering and metamemory as well as objective memory performance. University students (N = 108, MAge = 19.39, 77% women) completed the Importance of Remembering questionnaire (IORQ) as a measure of attitudes toward remembering. Subjective components of memory were measured by immediate and delayed judgments of learning (JOLs), global judgments of learning (global JOLs), retroactive confidence judgments (RCJs), and subjective mental workload. Objective memory performance was measured using a cued recall test using word pairs and picture pairs. The IORQ was only significantly correlated with absolute accuracy of delayed judgments of learning for words and pictures such that higher IORQ ratings were associated with less accurate judgments about how well they learned the items. No other correlations were significant. This suggests that a student’s lack of belief in the importance of remembering, at least as conceptualized on the IORQ, may not affect most aspects of memory performance, including those related to academic outcomes.