Metacognitive knowledge of effort, personality factors, and mood state: their relationships with effort-related metacognitive experiences

Abstract

The present study aimed at identifying the effects of mood treatment, personality factors, and metacognitive knowledge of effort–i.e., conceptualization of effort and perceptions of effort regulation–on metacognitive experiences of students, particularly on their reported feeling of difficulty and estimate of effort. The sample comprised 474 students of 5th and 7th grade of both genders. The participants were tested in two phases. In the first phase, they were asked to respond to questionnaires measuring (a) metacognitive knowledge of effort, (b) maths self-concept, (c) goal orientations, and (d) a test of maths ability. In the second phase, participants were subjected to mood treatment–neutral, positive, and negative– and were asked to solve a mathematical problem. They also rated their prospective metacognitive experiences before solving the problem and the retrospective ones after solving it. Mood treatment interacted with gender in the case of performance but it had no effect on metacognitive experiences. A series of regression analyses showed that positive mood, personality factors, and feeling of difficulty predicted the prospective estimate of effort. Only feeling of difficulty and performance predicted the retrospective estimate of effort. No effect of metacognitive knowledge of effort on estimate of effort was found.