Judgments of learning do not reduce to memory encoding operations: event-related potential evidence for distinct metacognitive processes.

To examine how judgments of learning (JOLs) are made, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to compare neural correlates of JOLs and successful memory encoding. Participants saw word pairs, and for each made a JOL indicating how confident they were that they would remember the pairing on a later cued recall task. ERPs were recorded while JOLs were made and were separated according to whether items were: (i) remembered or forgotten on the subsequent test, and (ii) rated likely or unlikely to be remembered. An early positive-going ERP effect was associated with both of these comparisons, whereas a later negative-going effect was present only in the separation based upon JOL ratings. ERP data therefore indicate that JOLs do not reduce to encoding processes that predict the accuracy of memory judgments.