Accurate metacognitive monitoring improves performance in a variety of naturalistic contexts. However, the laboratory contexts used to study metacognition differ from naturalistic environments in important ways. Specifically, laboratory experiments require learners to make repeated, overt judgments that are thought to reflect underlying metacognitive processes. We conducted two research studies to determine how the frequency of overt prompts affects cue use, judgment accuracy, and performance. This was accomplished by manipulating the frequency with which participants made judgements of difficulty (JODs) while completing a primary task. We found that participants who made frequent overt prompts attended more strongly to peripheral cues than to central cues. Frequent overt prompts also had differing effects on performance and judgment accuracy: they reduced metacognitive accuracy in a visual search task (Experiment 1) and performance on a standardized exam (Experiment 2). Although our experiments do not identify a clear, causal agent that drives differences in performance and judgment accuracy, these results illustrate the interesting relationship between cue use and metacognitive monitoring.

准确的元认知监控可提高各种自然主义环境下的表现。但是，用于研究元认知的实验室环境与自然环境在重要方面有所不同。具体而言，实验室实验要求学习者做出反复的，公开的判断，这些判断被认为反映了潜在的元认知过程。我们进行了两项研究，以确定公开提示的频率如何影响提示的使用，判断的准确性和性能。这是通过操纵参与者完成主要任务时做出困难判断（JOD）的频率来实现的。我们发现，经常公开提示的参与者对周围提示的关注要强于对中心提示的关注。常见的公开提示也对绩效和判断准确性产生不同的影响：他们降低了视觉搜索任务中的元认知准确性（实验1）和标准化考试的性能（实验2）。尽管我们的实验并未发现导致性能和判断准确性差异的明确原因，但这些结果说明了提示使用与元认知监控之间的有趣关系。