METACOGNITIVE judgements
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Metacognitive Judgments and Control of Study
The study of people’s metacognition—their knowledge of their own knowledge—is motivated by the assumption that if metacognition were accurate, people could take effective control of their own learning. Because of this assumed link to control of learning, much attention has been given to the question of whether metacognitive monitoring is or is not accurate. In a recent article, Dunlosky and Lipko (2007) showed that, although under many circumstances people’s metacomprehension judgments are biased, there are some circumstances under which they make excellent judgments. The same is true of learning situations, the focus of the present article. While some methods of eliciting people’s judgments produce biases that make these judgments undiagnostic about the difficulty of learning the materials, when people make cue-only delayed judgments of learning, their judgments are highly diagnostic of their future performance (Dunlosky & Nelson, 1992). This procedure involves waiting some time after the original study of the to-belearned materials before eliciting participants’ judgments of learning for each item, and then presenting the cues (questions) alone, without the targets (answers). Thus, although there are ways to evoke metacognitive errors (see Bjork, 1994), it is now well established that this method is effective in overcoming them. To be a fully self-regulating learner, however, an individual must not only make accurate judgments of their own learning but must also know how to convert those judgments into strategies for study that will pay off in the best learning gains for the situation at hand. This article, then, is concerned with questions of metacognitively guided control: Do people use their metaknowledge to control their learning? If so, how are the metacognitions used? And, finally, is their use effective? The first issue that must be addressed is the possibility that metacognitions are epiphenomenal—feelings, perhaps even compelling feelings, but feelings that may not have an impact on behavior. The assumption among researchers that this is not so stems largely from the finding of a negative correlation between people’s judgments of learning and the amount of time they allocate for study. Several more recent experiments have shown that, even when people appear to be behaving strategically, a negative correlation between judgments of learning and study time may not occur. The negative correlation disappears when people are under time pressure (Metcalfe, 2002; Son & Metcalfe, 2000; Thiede & Dunlosky, 1999) and when the well-learned items are eliminated from the pool of to-be-learned materials (Kornell & Metcalfe, 2006).
Given that the negative correlation between study time and judgments of learning can no longer be taken as prima facie evidence for a causal connection, the question arises as to whether people’s metacognitive judgments do influence study behavior. Three papers have addressed this question head on. Thiede, Anderson, and Therriault (2003) showed that when more accurate judgments of text comprehension were induced, people restudied more strategically and performed better. The study had three conditions, only one of which increased people’s metacomprehension accuracy. Only the condition that improved metacomprehension accuracy affected people’s choices. Participants in this condition chose to restudy texts on which they had performed poorly, whereas people in the other conditions chose randomly. After rereading what they had chosen, people in the condition that enhanced metacomprehension accuracy performed better on a final test than did people in the other two groups.
Given that people do use their metacognitions to control their study, the next question is how? There have been two theories of metacognitively guided study-time allocation: the discrepancyreduction model and the region-of-proximal-learning framework. Both—at least under some circumstances—predict a negative correlation between judgments of learning and study time. The discrepancy-reduction model (Dunlosky & Hertzog, 1998) says that people study the most difficult items preferentially, devoting most of their time to reducing the largest discrepancies from their internal learning criterion. This emphasis on studying the most difficult items results, directly, in a negative correlation between judgments of learning and study time. The region-of-proximal-learning framework (Metcalfe & Kornell, 2005) says that the first thing people do is to eliminate items they believe they have mastered from the pool of potential restudy items. This elimination of high judgment-of-learning items usually results in a negative correlation between study time and judgments of learning. These two models speak to people’s perseverance once an item is chosen for study, and both specify a stop rule. The discrepancy-reduction model says that the person will persevere until the item reaches an internal criterion of being (sufficiently) learned. A serious problem with this stop rule is that people could study a difficult item for an unreasonably—possibly even infinitely—long time. The region-of-proximal-learning framework says that people stop studying an item when their perceived rate of learning approaches zero. An easy item is learned quickly with no further perceived learning; the rate accordingly goes to zero quickly. More study time is predicted for medium-difficulty items if people perceive themselves to be making progress. However, people may stop quickly on extremely difficult items if they do not feel themselves to be making progress. This stop rule has implications for whether people should choose to mass or space their learning. First, they should choose to not study at all items with extremely high judgments of learning (because these items are thought to be already mastered). They should defer study until a later time—choosing spaced practice—on items with high judgments of learning, because these easy items will very quickly produce no increases in perceived learning, and the stop rule will dictate that study should cease. They should mass practice on difficult (but not impossible) items, because when the perceived rate of learning has not yet gone to zero the stop rule will dictate that the person should simply persist in studying. In an experiment looking at the relation of judgments of learning to spacing choices, this is exactly what college students did (Son, 2004). The further development of theory on what processes, concepts, and learning materials are in an individual’s region of proximal learning may allow us to pinpoint inadequacies in learners’ monitoring or choice strategies that lead to learning difficulties. The locus of impairments will have consequences for intervention, of course. Advances in the field of metacognition now allow us to elicit highly accurate judgments of learning from people as young as kindergarten-age children. But even with excellent metacognition, this knowledge may not be implemented appropriately to allow effective study strategies—suggesting an obvious point of intervention and remediation. Further research should be directed at isolating the conditions that produce optimal learning in people of different ages, the metacognitive and control processes they use, and whether or not these processes are effective. Such research will put psychologists in a better position to intervene, when necessary, but also, and ultimately, it will allow those interventions to foster individuals’ own effective control over their learning.
Work’s Cited:
Metcalfe, J. (2009, January 1). Metacognitive Judgments and Control of Study. Retrieved March 5, 2015, from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/metcalfe/PDFs/Metcalfe2009.pdf
The study of people’s metacognition—their knowledge of their own knowledge—is motivated by the assumption that if metacognition were accurate, people could take effective control of their own learning. Because of this assumed link to control of learning, much attention has been given to the question of whether metacognitive monitoring is or is not accurate. In a recent article, Dunlosky and Lipko (2007) showed that, although under many circumstances people’s metacomprehension judgments are biased, there are some circumstances under which they make excellent judgments. The same is true of learning situations, the focus of the present article. While some methods of eliciting people’s judgments produce biases that make these judgments undiagnostic about the difficulty of learning the materials, when people make cue-only delayed judgments of learning, their judgments are highly diagnostic of their future performance (Dunlosky & Nelson, 1992). This procedure involves waiting some time after the original study of the to-belearned materials before eliciting participants’ judgments of learning for each item, and then presenting the cues (questions) alone, without the targets (answers). Thus, although there are ways to evoke metacognitive errors (see Bjork, 1994), it is now well established that this method is effective in overcoming them. To be a fully self-regulating learner, however, an individual must not only make accurate judgments of their own learning but must also know how to convert those judgments into strategies for study that will pay off in the best learning gains for the situation at hand. This article, then, is concerned with questions of metacognitively guided control: Do people use their metaknowledge to control their learning? If so, how are the metacognitions used? And, finally, is their use effective? The first issue that must be addressed is the possibility that metacognitions are epiphenomenal—feelings, perhaps even compelling feelings, but feelings that may not have an impact on behavior. The assumption among researchers that this is not so stems largely from the finding of a negative correlation between people’s judgments of learning and the amount of time they allocate for study. Several more recent experiments have shown that, even when people appear to be behaving strategically, a negative correlation between judgments of learning and study time may not occur. The negative correlation disappears when people are under time pressure (Metcalfe, 2002; Son & Metcalfe, 2000; Thiede & Dunlosky, 1999) and when the well-learned items are eliminated from the pool of to-be-learned materials (Kornell & Metcalfe, 2006).
Given that the negative correlation between study time and judgments of learning can no longer be taken as prima facie evidence for a causal connection, the question arises as to whether people’s metacognitive judgments do influence study behavior. Three papers have addressed this question head on. Thiede, Anderson, and Therriault (2003) showed that when more accurate judgments of text comprehension were induced, people restudied more strategically and performed better. The study had three conditions, only one of which increased people’s metacomprehension accuracy. Only the condition that improved metacomprehension accuracy affected people’s choices. Participants in this condition chose to restudy texts on which they had performed poorly, whereas people in the other conditions chose randomly. After rereading what they had chosen, people in the condition that enhanced metacomprehension accuracy performed better on a final test than did people in the other two groups.
Given that people do use their metacognitions to control their study, the next question is how? There have been two theories of metacognitively guided study-time allocation: the discrepancyreduction model and the region-of-proximal-learning framework. Both—at least under some circumstances—predict a negative correlation between judgments of learning and study time. The discrepancy-reduction model (Dunlosky & Hertzog, 1998) says that people study the most difficult items preferentially, devoting most of their time to reducing the largest discrepancies from their internal learning criterion. This emphasis on studying the most difficult items results, directly, in a negative correlation between judgments of learning and study time. The region-of-proximal-learning framework (Metcalfe & Kornell, 2005) says that the first thing people do is to eliminate items they believe they have mastered from the pool of potential restudy items. This elimination of high judgment-of-learning items usually results in a negative correlation between study time and judgments of learning. These two models speak to people’s perseverance once an item is chosen for study, and both specify a stop rule. The discrepancy-reduction model says that the person will persevere until the item reaches an internal criterion of being (sufficiently) learned. A serious problem with this stop rule is that people could study a difficult item for an unreasonably—possibly even infinitely—long time. The region-of-proximal-learning framework says that people stop studying an item when their perceived rate of learning approaches zero. An easy item is learned quickly with no further perceived learning; the rate accordingly goes to zero quickly. More study time is predicted for medium-difficulty items if people perceive themselves to be making progress. However, people may stop quickly on extremely difficult items if they do not feel themselves to be making progress. This stop rule has implications for whether people should choose to mass or space their learning. First, they should choose to not study at all items with extremely high judgments of learning (because these items are thought to be already mastered). They should defer study until a later time—choosing spaced practice—on items with high judgments of learning, because these easy items will very quickly produce no increases in perceived learning, and the stop rule will dictate that study should cease. They should mass practice on difficult (but not impossible) items, because when the perceived rate of learning has not yet gone to zero the stop rule will dictate that the person should simply persist in studying. In an experiment looking at the relation of judgments of learning to spacing choices, this is exactly what college students did (Son, 2004). The further development of theory on what processes, concepts, and learning materials are in an individual’s region of proximal learning may allow us to pinpoint inadequacies in learners’ monitoring or choice strategies that lead to learning difficulties. The locus of impairments will have consequences for intervention, of course. Advances in the field of metacognition now allow us to elicit highly accurate judgments of learning from people as young as kindergarten-age children. But even with excellent metacognition, this knowledge may not be implemented appropriately to allow effective study strategies—suggesting an obvious point of intervention and remediation. Further research should be directed at isolating the conditions that produce optimal learning in people of different ages, the metacognitive and control processes they use, and whether or not these processes are effective. Such research will put psychologists in a better position to intervene, when necessary, but also, and ultimately, it will allow those interventions to foster individuals’ own effective control over their learning.
Work’s Cited:
Metcalfe, J. (2009, January 1). Metacognitive Judgments and Control of Study. Retrieved March 5, 2015, from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/metcalfe/PDFs/Metcalfe2009.pdf