Information about other people’s performance in a memory task can indicate how difficult the studied material is. We examined how such external cues influence confidence during learning of word pairs and whether these cues operate similarly to materials-based cues – those that objectively affect the difficulty of study materials (word relatedness) and those that merely make the materials appear more difficult (font alteration). Altogether, we conducted six experiments. In four experiments, the pairs were either related or unrelated; in two experiments, they appeared either in an ordinary or an altered font. In all experiments, after seeing each pair participants received information ostensibly reflecting the performance of a yoked participant: that this person had recalled the word, had failed to recall it, or had not seen it. They then made immediate judgments of learning (JOLs), estimating whether they would later recall the second word when cued with the first. JOLs were framed either in terms of remembering or forgetting (three experiments each). The experiments used either a 5-point scale or a binary yes/no response. This ensured that the findings were not tied to a specific response format or phrasing. As expected, participants were more confident about recalling related than unrelated pairs in the cued-recall test. Their JOLs were also higher when they were told that another participant had recalled the pair, compared with the “did not see it” condition, but negative information – that the other participant failed to recall it – had no effect. Data collection for the font-alteration experiments is ongoing.