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Declarative metacognition, use of reading strategies and reading motivation are important predictors of reading literacy. Moreover, reading motivation's strong links with reading strategy use and declarative metacognition raise questions about whether motivation moderates the effects of the latter on reading literacy and its development during secondary school. Whereas most previous research implemented cross-sectional analyses focusing on one or more of the aforementioned variables, this study takes a longitudinal perspective to examine how reading motivation (reading for enjoyment versus interest), declarative metacognition and reading strategy use - directly or in interaction - concurrently predict reading literacy in Grade 7 and subsequent changes until Grade 9. Applying structural equation models to a sample of 4,037 secondary school students from the German National Educational Panel Study, the results revealed that reading for enjoyment and declarative metacognition had strong effects on reading literacy in Grade 7. In contrast, reading for interest exhibited a small negative effect and the effects of strategy use were negligible. Longitudinal analyses replicated the cross-sectional pattern with more modest effect sizes. Contrary to our hypotheses, the effects of declarative metacognition and reading strategy use on reading literacy at Grade 7 as well as changes in reading literacy until Grade 9 were not moderated by aspects of reading motivation. Finally, regarding the trajectory of reading literacy, our results challenge previous assumptions on the importance of reading for interest and reading strategies use, but also confirm earlier findings on the relevance of declarative metacognition and reading for enjoyment., Author(s): Nora Heyne [sup.1] , Timo Gnambs [sup.2] , Kathrin Lockl [sup.2] , Nora Neuenhaus [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) https://ror.org/01c1w6d29, grid.7359.8, 0000 0001 2325 4853, University of Bamberg, , 96047, [...]

There is increasing need to identify factors that contribute to poor work ability with an aim to prevent work related problems such as sick leave and disability pension. In the Metacognitive Control System model, dysfunctional metacognitive beliefs are seen as an underlying factor in psychological vulnerability beyond disorder, and recent studies have reported that metacognitions are associated with work ability and work status. In the present study, we set out to test if there is a prospective relationship between dysfunctional metacognitions and self-assessed work ability. Individuals in working age (M = 37.19; SD = 10.31) participated in a four-timepoint self-report survey (N = 528; 75% females) separated by six weeks between each timepoint. Baseline gender differences and differences between participants by job status were conducted using t-test and one-way ANOVA, respectively. Latent growth curve with covariates assessed the impact of dysfunctional metacognitions on work ability across the four timepoints. Males reported higher work ability. Participants in fulltime job also reported higher work ability followed by those in part-time job, jobseekers, sick leave up to 12 months, and sick leave > 12 months, respectively. Dysfunctional metacognitions predicted work ability over time when controlling for gender, age, physical health status, and three common categories of emotional distress symptoms. This finding suggest that dysfunctional metacognitions are a prospective predictor of work ability beyond health status and implies that these beliefs should be targeted with a view to increasing work ability and thus potentially reduce risk for sick leave and other work-related problems., Author(s): Frederick Anyan [sup.1] , Odin Hjemdal [sup.1] , Henrik Nordahl [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) https://ror.org/05xg72x27, grid.5947.f, 0000 0001 1516 2393, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, [...]

Learners' metacognitive competencies play a vital role in affecting their learning outcomes, especially for language learners who need to write in English as a foreign language (EFL). Much research has widely explored writers' metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies in EFL learning contexts, yet the role of metacognitive experiences in writing is underexplored. To fill this gap, we conducted this study to investigate the effects of EFL student-writers' metacognitive experiences on their writing performance with reference to complexity, accuracy, and fluency. A total of 435 EFL student-writers at a university were invited to complete two writing tasks and the EFL Learners' Writing Metacognitive Experiences Questionnaire (EFLLWMEQ). Findings of structural equation modelling showed that metacognitive estimates of EFL writing had a significant positive effect on lexical complexity and fluency but a negative effect on writing accuracy. Metacognitive feelings of EFL writing were positively related to syntactic complexity, and online metacognitive strategies of EFL writing also positively contributed to writing accuracy. The findings shed light on the theoretical and pedagogical implications for the role of metacognition in learning to write in EFL., Author(s): Qiyu Sun [sup.1] [sup.2] , Lawrence Jun Zhang [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.64924.3d, 0000 0004 1760 5735, School of Foreign Language Education, Jilin University, , Changchun, China (2) grid.9654.e, [...]

How specific learning disabilities (SLD) affect metacognition in children? Given the importance of metacognition for cognitive growth during childhood, we aimed at determining whether metacognitive development in children with SLD undergo a shift from domain-specific to domain-general, as found during typical development. Children with SLD (N = 39; 20 females) and matched controls (N = 78; 40 females) aged between 10 and 14 (mean age = 12.2 years; mean parental education = 12.8 years) had to select the better strategy on each item in memory and arithmetic problem-solving tasks. Strategy use and judgments of confidence were assessed on each trial for each individual. We found that both children with SLD and controls had scores higher than chance when judging whether they selected the better strategy on a given item in both the arithmetic and the memory domains. Moreover, children with SLD were less accurate than controls when making their judgments. Furthermore, while our data showed a pattern consistent with domain-general metacognition in the control group, metacognition is bounded by task content in the SLD group. Implications of these findings to further our understanding of differences in metacognition between typically developing children and children with specific learning disabilities are discussed., Author(s): Marie Geurten [sup.1] , Patrick Lemaire [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.4861.b, 0000 0001 0805 7253, Psychology and Neuroscience of Cognition Unit, University of Liège, , B33 Trifacultaire - Quartier [...]

Inducing a state of meditation through conceptual metaphors used in the language of guided meditation instructions can have distinctive effects on well-being and meta-thinking. We hypothesized that the use of novel deliberate metaphor in the instructions of a guided meditation in which participants are invited to pay attention to thoughts would help novice meditators increase their meta-thinking activity and change their affective state during a guided meditation session. We conducted a study to test this hypothesis, using four experimental conditions (novel deliberate metaphor, conventional deliberate metaphor, non-metaphorical, silence) in micromeditation sessions with 324 university students. Results validate the instructions exploiting novel deliberate metaphor to activate meta-thinking activity and improve the affective state. These findings enhance our understanding of the short-term effects of guided meditation instructions, particularly regarding how the use of conceptual metaphor in the language of instructions can influence the meta-cognitive and affective levels of meditators, and open new directions both in applied metaphor studies and meditation research., Author(s): Antonio-José Silvestre-López [sup.1] , Daniel Pinazo [sup.2] , Alfonso Barrós-Lorcertales [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.9612.c, 0000 0001 1957 9153, Department of English Studies, Universitat Jaume I, , Av. de [...]

The aim of the study is to evaluate the links between emotion, feeling of difficulty (metacognitive experience) and the categorization performance of adolescents with intellectual disabilities. We hypothesized that categorization performance would be predicted more by feeling of difficulty than by emotion and would differ before and after solving the problem. Indeed, metacognitive experiences and emotions could vary the memory load and thus have an effect on cognitive performance. We recruited 38 participants aged 13 to 18 years, with mild intellectual disability. Feeling of difficulty was measured by the Metacognitive Experience Questionnaire, before and after a categorization task. Participants self-assessed their emotion. Findings show that retrospective feeling of difficulty and emotion accounted for 56.72% of the variance of categorization performance, with greater weight for retrospective feeling of difficulty. The results suggest that participants had some metacognitive experiences that could be mobilized before and after a task, indicating that the monitoring process in this population is inefficient rather than deficient., Author(s): Valérie Pennequin [sup.1] , Suzanne Igier [sup.1] , Sophie Pivry [sup.1] , Noémie Gaschet [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.12366.30, 0000 0001 2182 6141, E.A 2114 Psychologie des Ages de [...]

Cognitive tools (e.g., calculators) provide all users with the same potential. Yet when people use such cognitive tools, interindividual variations are observed. Previous findings have indicated that 2 main factors could explain these variations: intrinsic cognitive skills (i.e., the 'non-tool use' cognitive skills associated with the task targeted) and metacognitive beliefs about one's performance with tool use. In this study we sought to reproduce these findings and to investigate in more detail the nature of the relationships (i.e., linear vs. exponential) between tool use performance and intrinsic cognitive skills. In Experiment 1, 200 participants completed 2 cognitive tasks (calculation and geography) in 2 conditions (non-tool use vs. tool use). In Experiment 2, 70 participants performed a geography task in 2 conditions (non-tool use vs. tool use) and estimated their performance in each condition before completing the task. Results indicated that intrinsic cognitive skills and, to a lesser extent, metacognitive beliefs improved tool use performance: The higher the intrinsic cognitive skills and the higher participants estimated their tool use performance, the higher this tool use performance was. The nature of the relationship between tool use performance and intrinsic cognitive skills appeared to be linear rather than exponential. These findings extend previous research showing a strong impact of intrinsic cognitive skills on the performance associated with the use of cognitive tools or external aids. KEYWORDS: tool use, metacognition, cognitive offloading, Tools are extensions of the body but also of the mind (Clark & Chalmers, 1998). Calculators and maps extend our calculation and orientation skills. The external potential offered by a [...]

The Metacognitions Questionnaire-30 (MCQ-30) measures maladaptive metacognitive beliefs considered central to the metacognitive model of psychopathology. However, the psychometric properties of the MCQ-30 in test anxiety (TA) among university students are unknown. This study examined the MCQ-30 factor structure and concurrent validity in both trait and state TA. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses support the previously established five-factor structure of the MCQ-30 in both state and trait TA, with factors having good internal consistency. Structural equation modeling of the relationships between MCQ-30 subscales and TA found 'Negative beliefs about uncontrollability and danger of worry' to have the strongest association. The MCQ-30 appears a robust measure of metacognitive beliefs in TA and provides a basis for further testing of the validity of the metacognitive model in TA. Extending the reach of metacognitive therapy, which is based upon the metacognitive model, to TA could help to improve both student wellbeing and academic performance., Author(s): Christopher D. Huntley [sup.1] , Bridget Young [sup.2] , Catrin Tudur Smith [sup.3] , Vikram Jha [sup.4] , Peter L. Fisher [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.10025.36, 0000 0004 1936 [...]

Knowing how students approach learning in higher education contexts is key to promote learning strategies that are effective in the long run. Previous research has concluded that students often use ineffective learning strategies but believe them to be effective-a phenomenon known as metacognitive illusion. In a bid to broaden the perspective on students' use of learning strategies, this study draws on the notion of self-regulated learning as a theoretical lens. A questionnaire, comprising both open-ended and closed-ended questions, was developed to gather data from 416 engineering students. The questionnaire was geared towards (1) mapping what learning strategies students use in a real-world setting, in real courses, (2) probing their metacognitive awareness of the effectiveness of various learning strategies and (3) investigating why students choose certain learning strategies. We also compared which learning strategies the engineering students chose across programs and types of courses. The findings reveal a complex picture of why students sometimes use seemingly ineffective learning strategies, and we conclude that this is not always due to metacognitive illusion. It is instead often linked to attempts to regulate behaviour, motivation and/or learning context, sometimes in response to the context. This study adds to the current HE research investigating students' abilities to reflect on, assess and take control of their learning in an effective way, confirming that students need explicit guidance., Author(s): Maria Cervin-Ellqvist [sup.1] , Daniel Larsson [sup.1] , Tom Adawi [sup.1] , Christian Stöhr [sup.1] , Raffaella Negretti [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.5371.0, 0000 0001 0775 6028, Department of [...]

Resume Le present texte rend compte d'une recherche qui s'interesse au rapport entre la metacognition et les performances en ecriture des etudiants inscrits aux premiers semestres. A partir de l'hypothese [...]

A growing body of evidence supports the importance of nurturing children's thinking. This article reports on an investigation of the influence of teachers' implementation of the Visible Thinking approach developed [...]

This study investigated whether mothers of children assessed as having gifted/high IQ at 5 years were more likely to scaffold their children in analogical and metacognitive thinking during the infant/toddler period than mothers of children with more typical IQs. The researcher videotaped 21 children in monthly play sessions with their mothers, from the time that the children were 8 months old until they were 17 months old, and coded the mothers' verbalizations for scaffolding of analogical and metacognitive thinking. A psychologist assessed these children on the Stanford-Binet IV (Thorndike, 1986) and found ability levels ranging from average to high. Analysis showed that mothers of the children with high IQs introduced analogical and metacognitive scaffolding earlier than mothers of children with average IQs. The findings are consistent with a bidirectional model of gifted development in which mothers respond to support advanced development from infancy., Educators generally understand intellectual giftedness in childhood as advanced capacities for cognitive functioning that are significantly ahead of age norms, including the early development of a capacity for abstract and [...]

Self-questioning plays an important role in problem solving. In this study, we examined the effects of self-questioning techniques on problem solving and metacognition for illstructured workplace problems including counter-terrorism, which is unconventional. The independent variable was the strategy training in self-questioning techniques, structuring around the IDEAL model as a cognitive heuristics adaptation to resolve novel situations. The dependent variable metacognition was made up of two constructs i.e. knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition. These were measured by using the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) while overall problem solving performance was determined by assessing the participants' reasoning and the resulting consequences of their decision (outcome performance) in the pre- and post-tests. Our results revealed that the intervention had significant positive effects on the novices' reasoning performance, outcome performance and overall problem solving performance. In addition, the level of correlation between reasoning performance and outcome performance was significantly positive. Copyright [C] 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords security organization; problem solving; self-questioning; metacognition, INTRODUCTION Since most employees are hired, retained and compensated for solving problems, learners should become skilled at solving workplace problems (Jonassen et al., 2006). Successful problem solving requires the employment [...]

Some metacognition paradigms for nonhuman animals encourage the alternative explanation that animals avoid difficult trials based only on reinforcement history and stimulus aversion. To explore this possibility, we placed humans and monkeys in successive uncertainty-monitoring tasks that were qualitatively different. eliminating many associative cues that might support transfer across tasks. In addition, task transfer occurred under conditions of deferred and rearranged feedback--both species completed blocks of trials followed by summary feedback. This ensured that animals received no trial-by-trial reinforcement. Despite distancing performance from associative cues. humans and monkeys still made adaptive uncertainty responses by declining the most difficult trials. These findings suggest that monkeys' uncertainty responses could represent a higher-level, decisional process of cognitive monitoring, though that process need not involve full self-awareness or consciousness. The dissociation of performance from reinforcement has theoretical implications concerning the status of reinforcement as the critical binding force in animal learning. Keywords: metacognition, uncertainty monitoring, primate cognition, comparative psychology, monkeys DOI: 10.1037/a0020129

What do learners do when they control whether to engage in massed or spaced practice? According to theories by Son (2004) and by Metcalfe and Kornell (2005), the tendency for learners to choose spaced practice over massed practice should decline as item difficulty becomes greater. Support originally was obtained when pairs containing unfamiliar words were presented briefly for study, but subsequent research has suggested that, under these conditions, learners had difficulty initially encoding the members of the to-be-learned pairs. In Experiments 1 and 2, we failed to support the previously mentioned prediction in conditions in which the difficulty of learning was not correlated with the difficulty of initially encoding the pair members. Learners' relative preference for spaced practice increased, rather than decreased, with greater item difficulty, consistent with either a discrepancy-reduction-like account or an agenda-based-regulation account. In Experiment 3, we independently varied item difficulty and the point value that items were worth on the final test. Learners' relative preference for spaced practice was greater for high- than for low-value items but was unaffected by item difficulty. These results are more consistent with an agenda-based-regulation account than with a discrepancy-reduction account. More generally, learners' choices appear to be strategic and to reflect theory-based decisions, suggesting some level of appreciation for the relative benefits of massed versus spaced practice. Keywords: metacognition, spacing effect, metacognitive control, distributed practice DOI: 10.1037/a0020949

Three experiments examined testing effects on learning of natural concepts and metacognitive assessments of such learning. Results revealed that testing enhanced recognition memory and classification accuracy for studied and novel exemplars of bird families on immediate and delayed tests. These effects depended on the balance of study and test trials during training. Metacognitive measures provided results suggesting that participants were aware of the beneficial effects of testing. A new measure of metacognition at the level of categories is introduced and shown to be potentially useful for theory and applied purposes. It is argued that focusing on optimizing the learning of natural concepts encourages the convergence of theorizing about memory, concept learning, and metacognition and holds promise for the development of applications to education. Keywords: testing effects, concept learning, metacognition DOI: 10.1037/a0020636

Participants between the ages of 18 and 80 were tested on a complex working memory span task that was administered either using a typical experimenter-paced method or using a method in which the processing component was presented at a fixed, limited-pace presentation rate. Path analyses revealed that even after controlling for individual differences in general processing speed, the limited-pace task predicted unique variance in episodic memory, executive functioning, and fluid intelligence, whereas the experimenter-paced task did not. For the experimenter-paced task, slower responses on the processing component of the task were associated with better recall, but only when individual differences in processing speed were controlled. These findings suggest that metacognitive control of response times affects recall from working memory span tasks, as well as the relationship between span task recall and high-level cognition. These results support resource-sharing explanations of working memory and suggest that limiting processing times using computer pacing of complex span tasks can be an effective way to efficiently measure working memory capacity. doi: 10.3758/MC.38.7.868

Recently, Roberts et al. (2009) have suggested that pigeons performing delayed matching-to-sample appear unwilling to request to see the sample again (or even for the first time) prior to choice, even if that choice would result in an increase in matching accuracy. In each of their four experiments, however, presentation (Experiments 3 & 4) or representation of the sample (Experiments 1 & 2) resulted in an added delay to reinforcement. Thus, the pigeons had to choose between an immediate reinforcer on about 50% of the trials and a delayed reinforcer on a significantly higher percentage of the trials. In the present research, when we equated the two alternatives for delay to reinforcement, we found that pigeons generally showed a significant preference for trials with a relevant sample over trials with an irrelevant sample. When the contingencies were reversed, most of the pigeons reversed their preference. Although these results do not present evidence for metacognition, they do show that pigeons are sensitive to the potential for a higher probability of reinforcement when delay to reinforcement is controlled. Keywords: matching-to-sample, metamemory, metacognition, delay to reinforcement, pigeons DOI: 10.1037/a0020202

Recently, Redford (2010) found that monkeys seemed to exert metacognitive control in a category-learning paradigm. Specifically, they selected more trials to view as the difficulty of the category-learning task increased. However, category-learning difficulty was determined by manipulating the family resemblance across the to-be-learned exemplars. Although this effectively influenced the learning difficulty, difficulty was confounded with novelty. For instance, a weak family resemblance made category learning difficult, but also increased the amount of perceptual change from trial to trial. The current research rules out novelty in favor of difficulty by manipulating the number of dots involved in the dot distortions while controlling the amount of perceptual change. Key words: metacognition, rhesus macaques, categorization, dot distortions, Metacognition--defined as thinking about thinking--involves a monitoring and control component (Nelson & Narens, 1990). The monitoring component is responsible for assessing the mind's basic mental processes (Dunlosky & Nelson, 1992; [...]

An illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) occurs when people believe they understand a concept more deeply than they actually do. To date, IOEDs have been identified only in mechanical and natural domains, occluding why they occur and suggesting that their implications are quite limited. Six studies illustrated that IOEDs occur because people adopt an inappropriately abstract construal style when they assess how well they understand concrete concepts. As this mechanism predicts, participants who naturally adopted concrete construal styles (Study 1) or were induced to adopta concrete construal style (Studies 2-4 and 6), experienced diminished IOEDs. Two additional studies documented a novel IOED in the social psychological domain of electoral voting (Studies 5 and 6), demonstrating the generality of the construal mechanism, the authors also extended the presumed boundary conditions of the effect beyond mechanical and natural domains. These findings suggest a novel factor that might contribute to such diverse social-cognitive shortcomings as stereotyping, egocentrism, and the planning fallacy, where people adopt abstract representations of concepts that should be represented concretely. Keywords: illusion of explanatory depth, construal, metacognition, overconfidence, illusion of political sophistication DOI: 10.1037/a0020218

This study assessed metamemory and its role in actual episodic memory performance in 26 patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and 27 healthy controls. Metamemory knowledge and memory beliefs were assessed using the Metamemory Inventory in Adulthood. Episodic memory performance was investigated with the Remember/Know paradigm. Subjective sleepiness was evaluated. Patients underwent a polysomnographic assessment. In contrast to the control group's more stable memory beliefs, patients self-assessed their memory as declining across time, and felt more anxious about their memory. There was only a modest difference between patients' self-perceptions of their memory capacities and those of the control group, but patients' actual memory performance was strongly disturbed. While the latter was significantly correlated with severity of obstructive sleep apnea, scores on the Metamemory Inventory in Adulthood scales were not correlated with physiological measures, subjective sleepiness, or episodic memory performance. Obstructive sleep apnea may affect prefrontal cortex functioning and hence the ability to assess one's own memory impairment. DOI 10.2466/10.13.20.22.PR0.107.4.289-302

Previous research overwhelmingly suggests that feelings of ease people experience while processing information lead them to infer that their comprehension is high, whereas feelings of difficulty lead them to infer that their comprehension is low. However, the inferences people draw from their experiences of processing fluency should also vary in accordance with their naive theories about why new information might he easy or difficult to process. Five experiments that involved reading novel texts showed that participants who view intelligence as a fixed attribute, and who tend to interpret experiences of processing difficulty as an indication that they are reaching the limits of their ability, reported lower levels of comprehension as fluency decreased. In contrast, participants who view intelligence as a malleable attribute that develops through effort, and who do not tend to interpret experiences of processing difficulty as pertaining to some innate ability, did not report lower levels of comprehension as fluency decreased. In fact, when these participants were particularly likely to view effort as leading to increased mastery, decreases in fluency led them to report higher levels of comprehension. Keywords: processing fluency, theories of intelligence, comprehension, metacomprehension, metacognition DOI: 10.1037/a0019745

Researchers of metacognitive development in adulthood have exclusively used extreme-age-groups designs. We used a full cross-sectional sample (N = 285, age range: 18-80) to evaluate how associative relatedness and encoding strategies influence judgments of learning (JOLs) in adulthood. Participants studied related and unrelated word pairs and made JOLs. After a cued-recall test, retrospective item strategy reports were collected. Results revealed developmental patterns not available from previous studies (e.g., a linear age-related increase in aggregate JOL resolution across the life span). They also demonstrated the value of investigating multiple cues' influences on JOLs. Multilevel regression models showed that both relatedness and effective strategy use positively and independently influenced JOLs. Furthermore, effective strategy use was responsible for higher resolution of JOLs for unrelated items (relative to related items). The effects of relatedness and strategy use with JOLs did not interact with age. The monitoring of learning is spared by adult development despite age differences in learning itself. Keywords: learning, metacognition, strategy use, judgments of learning, aging DOI: 10.1037/a0019812

One aspect of metacognition is the monitoring of memory or comprehension measured with retrospective confidence judgments after test taking. The research questions of the present study were whether different measures for the accuracy of such confidence judgments are stable over learning time, whether they generalize over two different tests, and whether they predict the learning outcome. In order to answer these questions, a study was conducted in which university students (N = 113) learned about the basic concepts of operant conditioning for 30 min. Knowledge tests with confidence judgments presented after each item were obtained before learning, after 10 min, and at the end of the learning session. Bias and absolute bias were calculated as absolute measures of accuracy, and gamma, Pearson's r, and da were calculated as relative measures of accuracy. The results showed that the absolute measures were stable, but that the relative measures were not. Furthermore, absolute bias, gamma, and Pearson's r obtained 10 min after the beginning of the learning process predicted the learning outcome. The results are discussed with regard to research on different measures of accuracy for confidence judgments. doi: 10.3758/MC.38.4.441

Considerable research demonstrates that the depletion of self-regulatory resources impairs performance on subsequent tasks that demand these resources. The current research sought to assess the impact of perceived resource depletion on subsequent task performance at both high and low levels of actual depletion. The authors manipulated perceived resource depletion by having participants 1st complete a depleting or nondepleting task before being presented with feedback that did or did not provide a situational attribution for their internal state. Participants then persisted at a problem-solving task (Experiments 1-2), completed an attention-regulation task (Experiment 3), or responded to a persuasive message (Experiment 4). The findings consistently demonstrated that individuals who perceived themselves as less (vs. more) depleted, whether high or low in actual depletion, were more successful at subsequent self-regulation. Thus, perceived regulatory depletion can impact subsequent task performance--and this impact can be independent of one's actual state of depletion. Keywords: self-regulation, ego depletion, metacognition, perception DOI: 10.1037/A0017539

This study investigates whether the use of a spacing strategy absolutely improves final performance, even when the learner had chosen, metacognitively, to mass. After making judgments of learning, adult and child participants chose to mass or space their study of word pairs. However, 1/3 of their choic+es were dishonored. That is, they were forced to mass after having chosen to space and forced to space after having chosen to mass. Results showed that the spacing effect obtained for both adults and children when choices were honored. However, using a spacing strategy when it was in disagreement with the participant's own choice, or forced, did not enhance performance for the adults (Experiment 1). And although performance was enhanced for the children (beyond massing strategies), it was not as good as when the spacing decisions were self-chosen (Experiment 2). The data suggest that although spacing is an effective strategy for learning, it is not universal, particularly when the strategy is not chosen by the learner. In short, metacognitive control is often crucial and should be honored. Keywords: metacognitive control, spacing effect, children's metacognition, spacing and massing DOI: 10.1037/a0017892

Illusions of competence are thought to arise when judgements of learning (JOLs) made in the presence of intact cue-target pairs during study create a 'foresight bias,' such that JOLs are inflated by the apparent association between a cue and a target, despite the lack of benefit this association has for recall performance. For example, Castel, McCabe, and Roediger (2007) recently demonstrated ah illusion of competence for identical word pairs (mouse--mouse). In two experiments, the authors examined possible sources for this overconfidence, including phonetic, semantic, and orthographic similarity. Ah illusion of competence was found for homophones, synonyms, orthographically similar, and unrelated items, whereas no illusion of competence was found for word pairs with a relatively high forward-semantic association. Self-paced study rimes indicated that encoding fluency was not closely associated with the magnitude of overconfidence. Error data revealed participants may have been engaging in strategic responding in order to maximise correct recall. Our results underscore the importance of considering factors that influence both JOLs and recall performance when considering sources of (mis)calibration in absolute accuracy. Keywords: judgments of learning, cued-recall, metacognition DOI: 10.1037/a0015717

Retrieval practice is a potent technique for enhancing learning, but how often do students practice retrieval when they regulate their own learning? In 4 experiments the subjects learned foreign-language items across multiple study and test periods. When items were assigned to be repeatedly tested, repeatedly studied, or removed after they were recalled, repeated retrieval produced powerful effects on learning and retention. However, when subjects were given control over their own learning and could choose to test, study, or remove items, many subjects chose to remove items rather than practice retrieval, leading to poor retention. In addition, when tests were inserted in the learning phase, attempting retrieval improved learning by enhancing subsequent encoding during study. But when students were given control over their learning they did not attempt retrieval as early or as often as they should to promote the best learning. The experiments identify a compelling metacognitive illusion that occurs during self-regulated learning: Once students can recall an item they tend to believe they have 'learned' it. This leads students to terminate practice rather than practice retrieval, a strategy choice that ultimately results in poor retention. Keywords: retrieval practice, metacognition, self-regulated learning, study-time allocation, learning strategies DOI: 10.1037/a0017341

Singer (2006) presented evidence that reading time reflects, in part, processes of continuously verifying current clauses with reference to their text antecedents. This study extended that analysis to text ideas of indeterminate truth in their discourse context. For example, having read simply that Norm's house was destroyed, one might later read that Norm's cousin believed that Norm's house was destroyed by a fire. Research concerning people's reports of not knowing something suggested that the reading of clauses of indeterminate truth would be faster than for false or inconsistent clauses. In two experiments, target sentences varied in their truth, verb entailments, and use of negation with reference to their antecedents. Reading time for indeterminate targets was sometimes distinctly shorter and was never longer than for corresponding false targets. The effects were modulated by the entailments of factive and nonfactive main verbs and by negative expression. All of the conditions that were identical to ones of Singer (2006) replicated the former findings. It was concluded that encountering text ideas of indeterminate truth does not initiate protracted memory searches for comparable concepts. Keywords: comprehension: text, metamemory, memory-based text processing, pragmatics

The more accurately people assess their comprehension, the more likely they are to engage in study behaviors that precisely target gaps in their learning. However, comprehension regulation involves more than knowing when to implement a new study strategy; it also involves deciding which strategy will most effectively resolve one's confusion. In two experiments, we explored how people's motivational orientations influence which study strategies they select to regulate their comprehension. In Experiment 1, people who were motivated to vigilantly protect against potential mistakes (i.e., prevention-focused individuals) were more likely to adopt a rereading strategy than people who were motivated to eagerly pursue new learning opportunities (i.e., promotion-focused individuals). In Experiment 2, this difference in strategy use emerged specifically in response to confusing sentences that had been inserted into the text. Furthermore, by using rereading strategies to resolve their confusion, prevention-focused individuals performed better than promotion-focused individuals on a comprehension test and a transfer task.

In self-paced learning, when the regulation of effort is goal driven (e.g., allocated to different items according to their relative importance), judgments of learning (JOLs) increase with study time. When it is data driven (i.e., determined by the ease of committing the item to memory), JOLs decrease with study time (Koriat, Ma'ayan, & Nussinson, 2006). Because the amount of effort invested in different items is conjointly determined by data-driven and goal-driven regulation, an attribution process must be postulated in which variations in effort are attributed by the learner to data-driven or goal-driven regulation before the implications for metacognitive judgments are determined. To support the reality of this process, the authors asked learners to adopt a facial expression that creates a feeling of effort and induced them to attribute that effort either to data-driven or to goal-driven regulation. This manipulation was found to determine the direction in which experienced effort affected metacognitive judgment. Keywords: attribution, metacognition, judgments of learning, self regulation

The authors clarify the source of a conflict between previous findings related to metacognitive control over the distribution of practice. In a study by L. Son (2004), learners were initially presented pairs of Graduate Record Examination (GRE) vocabulary words and their common synonyms for 1 s, after which they chose to study the pair again immediately (massed practice), later (spaced practice), or not at all (done). Learners chose spaced practice less as pair difficulty increased. A. S. Benjamin and R. D. Bird (2006), using different materials and procedures and a longer presentation duration (5 s), concluded just the opposite. The authors adopted Son's materials and procedures and replicated her findings with a l-s stimulus duration. However, the declining choice of spacing as item difficulty increased largely reflected learners' failure to fully perceive items with brief presentations. With longer presentations, ensuring full perception, the choice of spaced practice increased with greater pair difficulty, in agreement with Benjamin and Bird. Theoretical implications are discussed in the context of discrepancy-reduction and proximal-learning perspectives. Keywords: metacognition, spacing effect, metacognitive control, distributed practice

The authors tested the role of individual items in recognition memory using a forced-choice paradigm with face stimuli. They constructed distractor stimuli using morphing procedures that were similar to two parent faces and then compared a studied morph against an unstudied morph that was similar to two studied parents. The similarity of the parent faces was carefully balanced so that the choosing rates for the studied and unstudied morphs were approximately equal. Despite being equally likely to choose the studied and the unstudied morph, participants were systematically more confident when choosing the studied morph. This result is incompatible with Gaussian signal detection theory, even with unequal variances for targets and distractors. The authors propose an extension of an extant sampling model, SimSample, which provides a qualitative and quantitative account of the confidence and recognition dissociation. The results suggest that observers make contact with individual items when making recognition judgments with faces and that the structure of the sampling and decision process naturally leads to this dissociation of confidence and recognition. Keywords: signal detection theory, recognition memory, faces, metacognition

Theories of self-regulated study assume that learners monitor item difficulty when making decisions about which items to select for study. To complement such theories, the authors propose an agenda-based regulation (ABR) model in which learners' study decisions are guided by an agenda that learners develop to prioritize items for study, given their goals and task constraints. Across 4 experiments, the authors orthogonally manipulated 1 task constraint--the reward structure of the task--with objective item difficulty, so that learners could use either item difficulty or potential reward in deciding how to allocate their study time. Learners studied items, were tested, and then selected half the items for restudy. As predicted by the ABR model, reward structure drove item selection more than did item difficulty, which demonstrates learners' agendas can override the effects of monitoring item difficulty in the allocation of study time. Keywords: study-time allocation, metacognition, agenda-based regulation, planning, item difficulty

A limitation of most comparative bias studies is that they lack an objective criterion against which to assess the accuracy of self-evaluations. Furthermore, comparisons are usually made with large populations or 'average peers' rather than specific others. To assess the robustness of self-enhancement when strong reality constraints are imposed, we created a video dating paradigm in which participants made profiles that they believed would be evaluated by opposite-sex peers. Blocks of seven profiles were created, and participants ranked their own profiles and estimated how others who viewed their videos would rank them (metaperceptions). Each actor was yoked to one observer who saw and ranked the same block of profiles. Despite the presence of an external reality check, participants in all three studies evinced strong self-enhancement tendencies as measured in self-rankings and metaperception judgments that exceeded those provided by observers. Keywords: self-enhancement; self-evaluation; self-views; metaperceptions; social comparison; comparative judgments

Three studies tested the hypothesis that negative metacognitive interpretations of anxious arousal under stereotype threat create cognitive deficits in intellectually threatening environments. Study 1 showed that among minority and White undergraduates, anxiety about an intelligence test predicted lower working memory when participants were primed with doubt as compared to confidence. Study 2 replicated this pattern with women and showed it to be unique to intellectually threatening environments. Study 3 used emotional reappraisal as an individual difference measure of the tendency to metacognitively reinterpret negative emotions and found that when sympathetic activation was high (indexed by salivary alpha-amylase), women who tended to reappraise negative feelings performed better in math and felt less self-doubt than those low in reappraisal. Overall, findings highlight how metacognitive interpretations of affect can undermine cognitive efficiency under stereotype threat and offer implications for the situational and individual difference variables that buffer people from these effects. Keywords: stereotype threat; test performance; working memory; anxiety; sympathetic activation; emotional reappraisal

Correspondence between judgments of learning (JOLs) and actual recall tends to be poor when the same items are studied and recalled multiple times (e.g., A. Koriat, L. Sheffer, & H. Ma'ayan, 2002). The authors investigated whether making relevant metamemory knowledge more salient would improve the association between actual and predicted recall as a function of repeated exposure to the same study list. In 2 experiments, participants completed 4 study-recall phases involving the same list of items. In addition to having participants make item-by-item JOLs during each study phase, after the 1st study--recall phase participants also generated change-in-recall estimates as to how many more or fewer words they would recall given another exposure to the same study list. This estimation procedure was designed to highlight repeated study as a factor that can contribute to recall performance. Activating metamemory knowledge about the benefits of repeated study for recall in this way allowed participants to accurately express this knowledge in a free-recall context (Experiment 2), but less so when the memory test was cued recall (Experiment 1). Keywords: cued recall, free recall, judgments of learning, metamemory

This response defends the view that human metacognition results from us turning our mindreading capacities upon ourselves, and that our access to our own propositional attitudes is through interpretation rather than introspection. Relevant evidence is considered, including that deriving from studies of childhood development and other animal species. Also discussed are data suggesting dissociations between metacognitive and mindreading capacities, especially in autism and schizophrenia.

Recollection rejection is a memory editing mechanism in which related lures are rejected because of the recollection of the lure's instantiating target (e.g., "I know it wasn't pretty because it was beautiful"). According to one view, recollection rejection requires an assumption on the part of the participant that both a word and its related lure could not have been studied. We examined this view by manipulating the instructions that were given to participants (Experiment 1) and the nature of the study list (Experiment 2). Estimates of recollection rejection derived from the phantom receive operating characteristic model found evidence for the role of metacognitive assumptions, but only when metacognitive knowledge was manipulated by varying the nature of the study list.

In many cognitive, metacognitive, and perceptual tasks, measurement of performance or prediction accuracy may be influenced by response bias. Signal detection theory provides a means of assessing discrimination accuracy independent of such bias, but its application crucially depends on distributional assumptions. The Goodman-Kruskal gamma coefficient, G, has been proposed as an alternative means of measuring accuracy that is free of distributional assumptions. This measure is widely used with tasks that assess metamemory or metacognition performance. The authors demonstrate that the empirically determined value of G systematically deviates from its actual value under realistic conditions. A distribution-specific variant of G, called [G.sub.c], is introduced to show why this bias arises. The findings imply that caution is needed when using G as a measure of accuracy, and alternative measures are recommended. Keywords: discrimination accuracy, gamma coefficient, metamemory measurement, signal detection theory

Although prior research has examined predictions of memory performance under conditions of interference at encoding, predictions of memory performance have not been examined for interference introduced via cues at retrieval. This was investigated in the present study by exposing participants to a random subset of to-be-recalled items just prior to retrieval (part-set cuing) and then eliciting an overall prediction of memory performance. Across three experiments, participants in part-set cuing conditions recalled proportionally fewer items than did participants who were not exposed to any cues. However, participants were unable to predict the detrimental effect of part-set cues on memory performance in either a semantic (Experiment 1) or an episodic (Experiment 2) memory task. Predictions were better calibrated after practice with part-set cuing, and there was evidence that prior experience with part-set cuing transferred to predictions made for a different part-set cuing task (Experiment 3). This suggests that only under some conditions are participants sensitive to the diminished accessibility of memories wrought by part-set cues and illustrates situations in which participants are or are not aware of variables at retrieval that influence memory performance.

Although perceptual information is utilized to judge size or depth, little work has investigated whether such information is used to make memory predictions. The present study examined how the font size of to-be-remembered words influences predicted memory performance. Participants studied words for a free-recall test that varied in font size and made judgments of learning (JOLs) for each item. JOLs were influenced by font size, as larger font sizes were given higher JOLs, whereas little relationship was evident between font size and recall. The effect was modified when other, more valid, sources of information (e.g., associative strength) were available when JOLs were made and persisted despite experience with multiple study-test sessions, use of a forgetting scale to assess predictions, and explicit warning of participants that font size has little effect on memory performance. When ease of reading was manipulated, such that large font size words were made less fluent, the effect was eliminated. Thus, highly accessible perceptual cues can strongly influence JOLs, likely via encoding fluency, and this effect can lead to metacognitive illusions. Keywords: memory, metacognition, judgments of learning, metamemory, perceptual cues

Despite being eclipsed in recent years by simulation theory, theory of mind and accounts of executive functioning, social-relational approaches to perspective taking and coordination based on the ideas of Jean Piaget and George Herbert Mead have never completely disappeared from the literature of developmental psychology. According to the social-relational view presented here, perspectives are holistic orientations to situations, within which individuals coordinate their actions and interactions with objects and others. The developmental processes by which perspectives are occupied, differentiated, and coordinated move from (1) prereflective interactivity (i.e., positioning within routine, repetitive interactive sequences during infancy and early childhood), to (2) reflective intersubjectivity (i.e., the simultaneous consideration and use of multiple perspectives within the intersubjective transactions of later childhood and early adolescence--processes that are accelerated and extended through increasingly sophisticated uses of language), and finally to (3) metareflective sociality (i.e., the abstracted and generalized social engagement across a diversity of personal, interpersonal, and sociocultural perspectives witnessed in mature adult negotiations and problem solving). These social-relational processes are used to reinterpret, revise, and extend Robert Selman's theory of the development of perspective taking and coordination. The result is a developmental process of occupying, experiencing, coordinating, and engaging across a diversity of perspectives within interactive, intersubjective, and psychological-sociocultural transactions that spans the course of individuals' lives and captures some facets of the complex, transformative, and ongoing interplay between societies and persons. Key Words Mead * Metareflective sociality * Perspective taking and coordination * Piaget * Prereflective interactivity * Reflective intersubjectivity * Selman

A surge of research has been conducted to examine memory editing mechanisms that help distinguish accurate from inaccurate memories. In the present experiment, the authors examined the ability of participants to use novelty detection, recollection rejection, and plausibility judgments to reject lures presented on a recognition memory test. Participants studied a list of word pairs that were arranged in a category relationship (both words from the same category) or an unrelated relationship (both words from different categories) under full or divided attention. At test, participants were given a yes/no recognition test in which they were to respond after seeing the test items for 400 ms or 2,800 ms. Some of the test items were rearranged word pairs that were consistent with the study relationship, whereas others were inconsistent with the study relationship. The results demonstrate that the participants required full attention at study to use novelty detection, recollection rejection, and plausibility judgments to reject lures. Moreover, the results indicate that a long response deadline at test was needed for participants to use both recollection rejection and plausibility judgments to reject lures. Keywords: recognition memory, memory editing, associative memory, metacognition

When answering questions from memory, respondents strategically control the precision or coarseness of their answers. This grain control process is guided by 2 countervailing aims: to be informative and to be correct. Previously, M. Goldsmith, A. Koriat, and A. Weinberg Eliezer (2002) proposed a satisficing model in which respondents provide the most precise answer that passes a minimum-confidence report criterion. Pointing to social-pragmatic considerations, the present research shows the need to incorporate a minimum-informativeness criterion as well. Unlike its predecessor, the revised, 'dual-criterion' model implies a distinction between 2 theoretical knowledge states: Under moderate-to-high levels of satisficing knowledge, a grain size can be found that jointly satisfies both criteria--confidence and informativeness. In contrast, under lower levels of unsatisficing knowledge, the 2 criteria conflict--one cannot be satisfied without violating the other. In support of the model, respondents often violated the confidence criterion in deference to the informativeness criterion, particularly when answering under low knowledge, despite having full control over grain size. Results also suggest a key role for the 'don't know' response, which when available, can be used preferentially to circumvent the criterion conflict. Keywords: memory accuracy and informativeness, metamemory, monitoring and control, don't know, gist memory

Two processes are postulated to underlie delayed judgments of learning (JOLs)--cue familiarity and target retrievability. The two processes are distinguishable because the familiarity-based judgments are thought to be faster than the retrieval-based processes, because only retrieval-based JOLs should enhance the relative accuracy of the correlations between the JOLs and criterion test performance, and because only retrieval-based judgments should enhance memory. To test these predictions, in three experiments, the authors either speeded people's JOLs or allowed them to be unspeeded. The relative accuracy of the JOLs in predicting performance on the criterion test was higher for the unspeeded JOLs than for the speeded JOLs, as predicted. The unspeeded JOL conditions showed enhanced memory as compared with the speeded JOL conditions, as predicted. Finally, the unspeeded JOLs were sensitive to manipulations that modified recallability of the target, whereas the speeded JOLs were selectively sensitive to experimental variations in the familiarity of the cues. Thus, all three of the predictions about the consequences of the two processes potentially underlying delayed JOLs were borne out. A model of the processes underlying delayed JOLs based on these and earlier results is presented. Keywords: judgments of learning, cue familiarity, target retrievability, metacognition, dual-process model

In answering general-information questions, a within-person confidence-accuracy (C-A) correlation is typically observed, suggesting that people can monitor the correctness of their knowledge. However, because the correct answer is generally the consensual answer--the one endorsed by most participants--confidence judgment may actually monitor the consensuality of the answer rather than its correctness. Indeed, the C-A correlation was positive for items with a consensually correct answer but negative for items with a consensually wrong answer. Results suggest that the consensuality--confidence correlation may be mediated by 2 internal mnemonic cues that are correlated with consensuality: Consensual answers are reached faster and are selected more consistently by the same person on different occasions than nonconsensual answers. The results argue against a direct-access view of confidence judgments and suggest that such judgments will be accurate only as long as people's responses are by and large correct across the sampled items, thus stressing the criticality of a representative design. Keywords: subjective confidence, metacognition, probabilistic mental models, consensuality, confidence-accuracy relationship