Metamemory is the process of monitoring and controlling one’s beliefs, knowledge, and mental processes of memory. One fundamental question is whether the monitoring component of this theory should be considered as only one ability or an umbrella of more specialized abilities. In the current study, we aimed to understand the structure of metamemory monitoring by testing unitary versus specialized measurement models of metamemory. Monitoring accuracy and mean ratings from four common monitoring judgments across different stimulus presentation pairs were calculated to create latent factors for each judgment using structural equation modeling. Our results suggest that although each of the monitoring judgments was correlated with one another, monitoring may be composed of two distinct abilities: one occurring during initial presentation and one occurring at retrieval. These results can help explain prior behavioral and brain dissociations between predictions at encoding and retrieval in terms of experimental and material manipulations. We caution against the conceptualization and use of metamemory monitoring as a unitary construct.

元记忆是监视和控制一个人的信念、知识和记忆的心理过程的过程。一个基本问题是，该理论的监控组件是否应仅被视为一种能力，还是应被视为更专业能力的总称。在当前的研究中，我们旨在通过测试元记忆的统一测量模型与专门的测量模型来了解元记忆监测的结构。计算来自不同刺激呈现对的四种常见监测判断的监测准确性和平均评级，以使用结构方程模型为每个判断创建潜在因素。我们的结果表明，尽管每个监控判断都相互关联，但监控可能由两种不同的能力组成：一种发生在初始呈现期间，一种发生在检索时。这些结果可以帮助解释在实验和材料操作方面编码和检索预测之间的先前行为和大脑分离。我们警告不要将元记忆监控概念化和使用作为一个单一的结构。