Illusions of Competence
Those involved in the field of Education, term these as “Illusions of Competence”. Asher Koriat from the University of Haifa and Robert A. Bjork from the University of California, Los Angeles published a paper in the year 2005 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, titled “Illusions of Competence in Monitoring One’s Knowledge During Study”. In this study the authors identified the main cause for Errors in Judgments on Learning was caused by the differences that are present between conditions that exist when the person is learning and when he is being tested. The most obvious difference is that during study the answer is also present before the student while during testing the answer is not.
Another reason for students having an incorrect idea about their preparedness for their tests is that during study students are in familiar surroundings from which they pick up cues that aid their ability to accurately reproduce the matter they are trying to study. During the tests however they are in an examination hall; unfamiliar surroundings which hamper their ability to recall what they have studied.
Text books and other study material are often organized by topic. This means that at the time of learning a student tackles problems that are similar and require a consistent approach to solve them. During testing however, these problems could be in random order, with no cues in the test paper as to how they should be handled.
How can a student overcome these Illusions of Competency? It is of the utmost importance that a student can accurately assess his level of competence so that he can face examinations while being fully prepared.
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