On what cues do we judge gestures in working memory?

The aim of this article is to investigate the nature of the cues upon which judgments of confidence in gestural working memory are based. 25 participants were asked to reproduce sequences of 27 meaningless gestures. The memory task was performed under three different experimental conditions: control, gestural interference, and verbal interference. After each task, participants were asked to make a judgment of confidence on their overall performance. While a drop in performance was observed only in the gestural interference condition, participants felt their performances were worse in both conditions of interference. Correlation analyses between performance and judgment accuracy (difference between judgment and performance) indicate a positive correlation only in the control condition. These results show that judgment of confidence is partly based on cues linked to verbalization, which in fact are irrelevant for judging performance. These results are consistent with a dissociation between the treatment and the judgment of gestures in working memory.