The motoric fluency effect on metamemory

Predictions of future memory are often influenced by the ease or fluency of processing information. Susser and Mulligan (2015) recently demonstrated that motoric fluency (of writing with the dominant or non-dominant hand) may likewise affect these predictions. In the present study, we report five experiments that specify the locus of this motoric fluency effect. In Experiment 1, we examined whether the effect was driven by differences in effective study time across hand conditions. In Experiment 2, we assessed whether the effect could be obtained without any visual feedback from handwriting. In Experiments 3a and 3b, we investigated the contribution of visual feedback alone. In Experiment 4, we used prestudy JOLs to determine whether participants may develop a belief about handedness in the context of the experiment. Taken together, the results indicate that the motoric act of producing information in a fluent or disfluent manner is sufficient to produce an effect on memory predictions, that visual information from writing does not contribute, and that on-line interaction with the task plays a role. The experience of motoric fluency appears to be another cue that affects metamemory.