The HED Task Catalog is under development. IDs are not stable until formal release. Comments are welcome at github.com/hed-standard/hed-task/issues.

Feeling-of-Knowing Task

HED task ID: hedtsk_feeling_of_knowing

Family: Metacognition, agency and interoception tasks

Also known as: FOK Task, Feeling-of-Knowing Judgment, Hart FOK Paradigm

After failing to recall a studied item, participants rate the likelihood they could recognize the answer; the accuracy of these predictions (gamma correlation with recognition) indexes metacognitive monitoring of unretrieved memory.

Description

The Feeling-of-Knowing task measures the accuracy of metacognitive judgments about information that cannot currently be recalled. In the standard Hart (1965) paradigm, participants study cue-target pairs, attempt cued recall, and then — for items they failed to recall — rate their confidence that they would recognize the correct answer among alternatives. A subsequent recognition test determines the accuracy of these predictions. The key dependent measure is resolution — the correspondence between feeling-of-knowing magnitude and recognition performance, typically quantified by the Goodman-Kruskal gamma correlation. Feeling-of-knowing judgments are thought to rely on partial retrieval of target attributes, cue familiarity, and accessibility of related information, rather than direct access to trace strength. The paradigm dissociates from Judgment-of-Learning tasks in timing (post-retrieval-failure vs. post-encoding), prediction target (recognition vs. recall), and cognitive basis (partial retrieval and cue familiarity vs. encoding fluency). Feeling-of-knowing accuracy is sensitive to frontal lobe damage, aging, Alzheimer’s disease, and schizophrenia, and is more closely tied to executive functioning than Judgment-of-Learning accuracy.

Inclusion test

An experiment is an instance of this task when its procedure matches, it manipulates at least one of the listed variables, and it records at least one of the listed measures.

Procedure	Participants study cue-target pairs, attempt cued recall, and for each unrecalled item rate their feeling of knowing (likelihood of future recognition); a subsequent recognition test assesses prediction accuracy.
Manipulation	Cue familiarity (high vs. low); target accessibility (related vs. unrelated cues); number of recognition alternatives; delay between judgment and recognition test; domain (episodic vs. semantic general knowledge).
Measurement	Feeling-of-knowing magnitude (mean rating); resolution (gamma correlation between ratings and recognition accuracy); calibration (correspondence between predicted and actual recognition probabilities); response latency for feeling-of-knowing judgments.

Variations

Named versions that change what the participant experiences or does. The identifier of a variation is hedvar_<task>__<variation>.

Variation	Description	Justification
Episodic Feeling-of-Knowing hedvar_feeling_of_knowing__episodic_feeling_of_knowing	Studied cue-target pairs; feeling-of-knowing judgments for newly learned episodic material. The standard laboratory paradigm.	FOK for episodic memories; unrecalled episode-specific items
Semantic / General-Knowledge Feeling-of-Knowing hedvar_feeling_of_knowing__semantic_general_knowledge_feeling_of_knowing	General-knowledge questions (e.g., ‘What is the capital of Australia?’); feeling-of-knowing ratings for unrecalled answers. Tests pre-existing semantic memory monitoring.	FOK for semantic facts; different memory system
Cue-Only vs. Cue-Target Paradigm hedvar_feeling_of_knowing__cue_only_vs_cue_target_paradigm	Cue-only: only the cue is presented at judgment time. Cue-target: the cue plus some target information is available. Manipulates the information basis of the judgment.	Study with or without target; tests whether target exposure affects FOK accuracy
Tip-of-the-Tongue Variant hedvar_feeling_of_knowing__tip_of_the_tongue_variant	Feeling-of-knowing specifically for items in a tip-of-the-tongue state (strong feeling of knowing with partial phonological retrieval). Bridges feeling-of-knowing and tip-of-the-tongue literatures.	TOT state as extreme FOK; different phenomenology and partial information access
Feeling-of-Knowing with Feedback hedvar_feeling_of_knowing__feeling_of_knowing_with_feedback	Participants receive recognition outcomes and can update subsequent feeling-of-knowing judgments. Tests metacognitive learning and calibration improvement.	Accuracy feedback after recognition test; tests calibration learning

Cognitive processes

This task is designed to engage the following processes:

• Feeling of knowing

• Metacognitive monitoring

• Retrieval

• Familiarity

Key references

• Hart, J. T. (1965). Memory and the feeling-of-knowing experience. Journal of Educational Psychology, 56(4), 208-216. (DOI, PubMed)

• Nelson, T. O. (1984). A comparison of current measures of the accuracy of feeling-of-knowing predictions. Psychological Bulletin, 95(1), 109-133. (DOI, PubMed)

• Koriat, A. (1993). How do we know that we know? The accessibility model of the feeling of knowing. Psychological Review, 100(4), 609-639. (DOI)

Further references

• Hertzog, C., Dunlosky, J., & Sinclair, S. M. (2010). Episodic feeling-of-knowing resolution derives from the quality of original encoding. Memory & Cognition, 38(6), 771-784. (DOI, PubMed)

• Schwartz, B. L., & Metcalfe, J. (2011). Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states: Retrieval, behavior, and experience. Memory & Cognition, 39(5), 737-749. (DOI, PubMed)

• Izaute, M., & Bacon, E. (2005). Specific effects of an amnesic drug: Effect of midazolam on study time allocation and on judgment of learning. Neuropsychopharmacology, 30(6), 1132-1139. (DOI)

• Reggev, N., Zuckerman, M., & Maril, A. (2011). Are all judgments created equal? An fMRI study of semantic and episodic metamemory predictions. Neuropsychologia, 49(5), 1332-1342. (DOI, PubMed)