Metamemory monitoring, study behavior, and memory are presumably causally connected. When people misjudge their memory, their study behavior should be biased accordingly. Remedying metamemory illusions should debias study behavior and improve memory. One metamemory illusion concerns source memory, a critical aspect of episodic memory. People predict better source memory for items that originated from an expected source (e.g., toothbrush in a bathroom) rather than an unexpected source (e.g., shampoo in a kitchen), whereas actual source memory shows the opposite: an inconsistency effect. This expectancy illusion biases restudy choices: Participants restudy more unexpected than expected source–item pairs. The authors tested the causal relationships between metamemory and source memory with a delay and a source-retrieval attempt between study and metamemory judgment to remedy the expectancy illusion and debias restudy choices. Debiased restudy choices should enhance source memory for expected items, thereby reducing the inconsistency effect. Two groups studied expected and unexpected source–item pairs. They made metamemory judgments and restudy choices immediately at study or after delay, restudied the selected pairs, and completed a source-monitoring test. After immediate judgments, participants predicted better source memory for expected pairs and selected more unexpected pairs for restudy. After delayed judgments, participants predicted a null effect of expectancy on source memory and selected equal numbers of expected and unexpected pairs. Thus, the expectancy illusion was partially remedied and restudy choices were debiased. Nevertheless, source memory was only weakly affected. The results challenge the presumed causal relationships between metamemory monitoring, study behavior, and source memory.

元记忆监控、学习行为和记忆可能是因果关系。当人们误判自己的记忆时，他们的学习行为就应该相应地产生偏差。补救元记忆错觉应该消除学习行为的偏见并提高记忆力。一种元记忆错觉与源记忆有关，这是情景记忆的一个重要方面。人们预测来自预期来源（例如，浴室中的牙刷）而不是意外来源（例如，厨房中的洗发水）的物品具有更好的来源记忆，而实际来源记忆则相反：不一致效应。这种预期错觉偏见重新研究选择：参与者重新研究比预期的源项目对更意外。作者测试了元记忆和源记忆之间的因果关系，并在学习和元记忆判断之间进行了延迟和源检索尝试，以纠正预期错觉和去偏向重新研究选择。去偏的重新研究选择应该增强对预期项目的源记忆，从而减少不一致的影响。两个小组研究了预期和意外的来源-项目对。他们在学习时或延迟后立即做出元记忆判断和重新研究选择，重新研究选定的对，并完成源监控测试。在立即做出判断后，参与者预测对预期的配对有更好的源记忆，并选择更多意想不到的配对进行重新研究。经过延迟的判断，参与者预测期望对源记忆的无效影响并选择相等数量的预期和意外对。因此，期望错觉得到了部分纠正，重新研究的选择也得到了消除。然而，源内存仅受到微弱影响。结果挑战了元记忆监测、学习行为和源记忆之间假定的因果关系。