How Do We Know What We Know? Exploring Judgments of Learning

Judgments of Learning (JOLs) are prospective metacognitive evaluations in which individuals estimate their likelihood of remembering information in the future. This commentary reviews current evidence regarding the mechanisms underlying JOLs, focusing on three main debates: (1) how the act of making JOLs can influence memory performance—a phenomenon known as the reactivity effect; (2) whether JOLs are dependent on memory representations or operate independently via heuristic cues; and (3) whether they unfold as a single-stage or multi-stage process. Accumulating evidence shows that JOLs can enhance memory by engaging attentional and elaborative processes during encoding. Empirical findings support a hybrid model in which JOLs draw on both direct access to memory traces and inferential processes guided by encoding fluency and other cues. Additionally, neuropsychological and neuroimaging data further suggest partial independence between memory and metacognitive monitoring. Recent ERP studies support a dual-stage framework, revealing distinct early and late neural components linked to different aspects of the judgment process. This commentary highlights the dynamic and interactive nature of metacognitive monitoring, calling for integrative models that account for its temporal, cognitive, and neural complexity.