<P> The right ventral prefrontal cortex and the insular cortex are specific to "knowing that you don't know", whereas prefrontal regions are generally more specific to the feeling of knowing . These findings suggest that a person knowing that he or she does not know and feeling of knowing are two neuroanatomically dissociable features of metamemory . As well, "knowing that you don't know" relies more on cue familiarity than feeling of knowing does . </P> <P> There are two basic types of "do not know" decisions . First is a slow, low confidence decision . This occurs when a person has some knowledge relevant to the question asked . This knowledge is located and evaluated to determine whether the question can be answered based on what is stored in memory . In this case, the relevant knowledge is not enough to answer the question . Second, when a person has zero knowledge relevant to a question asked, he or she is able to produce a rapid response of not knowing . This occurs because the initial search for information draws a blank and the search stops, thus producing a faster response . </P> <P> The quality of information that is recalled can vary greatly depending on the information being remembered . It is important to understand the differences between remembering something and knowing something . If information about the learning context accompanies a memory (i.e. the setting), it is called a "remember" experience . However, if a person does not consciously remember the context in which he or she learned a particular piece of information and only has the feeling of familiarity towards it, it is called a "know" experience . It is widely believed that recognition has two underlying processes: recollection and familiarity . The recollection process retrieves memories from one's past and can elicit any number of associations of the prior experience ("remember"). In contrast, the familiarity process does not elicit associations with the memory and there are no contextual details of the prior learning occurrence ("know"). Since these two processes are dissociable, they can be affected by different variables (i.e. when remember is affected know is not and vice versa). For example, "remember" is affected by variables such as depth of processing, generation effects, the frequency of occurrence, divided attention at learning, and reading silently vs. aloud . In contrast, "know" is affected by repetition priming, stimulus modality, amount of maintenance rehearsal, and suppression of focal attention . There are cases however, where "remember" and "know" are both affected, but in opposite ways . An example of this would be if "remember" responses are more common than "know" responses . This can occur due to word versus nonword memory, massed versus distributed practice, gradual versus abrupt presentations, and learning in a way that emphasizes similarities vs. differences . </P> <P> Another aspect of the "remember" versus "know" phenomenon is hindsight bias, also referred to as the "knew it all along effect". This occurs when a person believes that an event is more deterministic after it has happened . That is, in the face of the outcome of a situation, people tend to overestimate the quality of their previous knowledge, thus leading the person to a distortion towards the provided information . Some researchers believe that the original information gets distorted by the new information at the time of encoding . The term "creeping determinism" is used to emphasize the fact that it is completely natural for one to integrate outcome information with the original information to create an appropriate whole out of all the pertinent information . Although it was found that informing individuals about the hindsight bias before they took part in experiments did not decrease the bias, it is possible to avoid the effects of the hindsight bias . Further, by discrediting the outcome knowledge, people are better able to accurately retrieve their original knowledge state, therefore reducing the hindsight bias . </P>

Metamemory research has shown that an individual's feelings-of-knowing