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The Font Size Effect Depends on List Relatedness
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Description: The font size effect refers to the metacognitive illusion that larger fonts lead to higher judgments of learning (JOLs) but not better recall. Prior studies demonstrated robust JOL effects of font size under conditions of pair relatedness (i.e., cue-target relatedness within a word pair), even though pair relatedness is a more diagnostic cue than font size. However, it remains an open question whether the JOL effects of font size persist under conditions of list relatedness (i.e., relations across items on a single-word lists). In the current study, we examined the JOL and recall effects of font size when font size (18-pt vs. 48-pt) and list relatedness (related vs. unrelated) were factorially manipulated in three JOL-recall experiments. Additionally, to manipulate the salience of list relatedness, we presented related and unrelated lists in a blocked manner in Experiment 1 but a mixed manner in Experiments 2 and 3. Our results showed that the JOL effects of font size were either attenuated or eliminated when list relatedness is a salient cue during encoding, pointing to a trade-off between item-specific processing and relational processing when making JOLs. Moreover, we found that the smaller font led to a better recall for related lists but not for unrelated lists across all three experiments. Therefore, our results demonstrate that individual cues may not be integrated with equal weight and may interact with each other during the JOL process. Additionally, highlighting key information with larger fonts may not be optimal with clusters of related items.