The role of font size and font style in younger and older adults' predicted and actual recall performance.

We examined how font sizes (18pt., 48 pt.) and font styles (regular, italic, bold) influenced younger and older adults' judgments of learning (JOLs) and recall. In Experiment 1 younger adults gave higher JOLs and obtained higher recall than older adults. However, JOLs and recall varied for both age groups as a function of font size and font style manipulations despite a tendency for both groups to predict higher recall for items in large and in regular and italic styles than for small and bold fonts and achieve higher recall for regular than italic or bold items. No age differences were found in relative accuracy, with near-perfect calibration in absolute accuracy for younger and older adults. Experiment 2 presented a description of Experiment 1 and asked participants to predict recall for the various font size/style combinations. Younger and older adults predicted higher recall for large than small font items, regardless of font style, and higher recall for bold than regular or italic styles, regardless of font size. Memory predictions did not align across experiments, suggesting that memory beliefs combine with processing fluency to affect JOLs and recall.