Confidence and Calibration of Comprehension in Adolescence: Are They Domain-General or Domain-Specific?

Abstract

Self-regulation of learning is important for reading comprehension. Self-regulation is typically measured by confidence rating before or after a task and calibration calculations. Less is known about the stability of confidence and calibration within and across different tasks. In this study, we examined whether confidence ratings and calibration of adolescence differ by task, skill and time of rating (before, during, and after the task). Eighty-six adolescents took a reading comprehension task and a non-verbal spatial reasoning task (TONI) and were asked to self-evaluate their confidence before, during, and after the tasks. Results within tasks showed that ratings were significantly different as a function of time. Differences were also found across tasks. Consistent with findings in other age groups, good comprehenders were better than poor comprehenders in calibration. Our findings suggest that metacognitive evaluations have domain-specific as well as domain-general aspects and are also influenced by reading comprehension skills.