Metacognitive Monitoring in Reading Comprehension: Examining the Role of Cognitive Flexibility, Vocabulary, and Fluency in Young Readers.

BackgroundComputer‐based scaffolding has been intensively used to facilitate students' self‐regulated learning (SRL). However, most previous studies investigated how computer‐based scaffoldings affected the cognitive aspect of SRL, such as knowledge gains and understanding levels. In contrast, more evidence is needed to examine the effects of scaffolding on the metacognitive dimension and efficiency outcome of SRL.ObjectivesThis study aims to examine the role of computer‐based scaffolding in students' metacognitive monitoring and problem‐solving efficiency.MethodsSeventy‐two medical students completed two clinical reasoning tasks in BioWorld, an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) designed for promoting medical students' diagnostic expertise. During solving the tasks, students were asked to report their confidence judgements about proposed diagnoses. Computer trace data were used to identify task completion time (CT) and students' use of three scaffolding types, that is, conceptual, strategic, and metacognitive. Then we calculated students' metacognitive monitoring accuracy (i.e., calibration) and problem‐solving efficiency.Results and ConclusionsOne‐sample t‐test demonstrated that students inaccurately monitored their learning processes and were overconfident in both tasks. Linear mixed‐effects models (LMMs) indicated that the intensive use of metacognitive scaffolding positively predicted students' metacognitive monitoring accuracy. Moreover, strategic scaffolding was negatively related to problem‐solving efficiency, whereas metacognitive scaffolding positively influenced problem‐solving efficiency.TakeawaysThis study shows the importance of metacognitive scaffolding in improving the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring and problem‐solving efficiency. Findings from this study provide new insights for instructors and ITS developers to optimise the design of scaffoldings.

The effects of multitasking on metacognitive monitoring in primary and secondary school students

Self-regulated learning theory acknowledges the importance of an individual's metacognitive monitoring and group-level regulation for learning achievement in collaborative learning. However, very few studies have empirically investigated the interplay of these factors. This study aimed to investigate how groups' metacognitive interactions, group-level regulation, and individuals' metacognitive monitoring accuracy together predict students' learning achievement. Thirty groups of secondary school students (n = 94) attended a five-week physics course involving four 90-min lessons. Each lesson included a collaborative learning session in which the students solved physics problems in groups of three. After each session, the students filled out a quiz that evaluated their learning of the core concepts related to each lesson. The students' collaborative learning was video-recorded using 360-degree cameras. First, the groups' metacognitive interaction, co-regulation (CoRL), and socially shared regulation (SSRL) during collaborative learning were coded from the video data. Second, the students' metacognitive monitoring accuracy was determined in relation to quizzes presented at the end of each collaborative session. Each student's learning achievement was assessed at the end of the course with an individual written exam. Bayesian multilevel models were used to analyze the nested data. The results showed that the frequency of metacognitive interaction was positively related to learning achievement. However, the relation between CoRL and learning achievement was moderated by monitoring accuracy and metacognitive interaction. The relation between CoRL and achievement was positive when coupled with a high frequency of metacognitive interactions but negative under a low frequency of metacognitive interactions. In addition, in line with theory, the students with lower monitoring accuracy achieved higher learning when CoRL was frequent in a group. Due to the low occurrence of SSRL, its relation with learning achievement could not be analyzed. No reliable evidence for the relation between monitoring accuracy and learning achievement was found. The results highlighted the complex interplay of individual-and group-level factors related to collaborative learning outcomes.

When assessing their certainty, children are often poor at accurately monitoring their level of learning. The study examined the relationships between memory performance, intellectual ability, and metacognitive monitoring accuracy in kindergarten children. We also explored whether specific thresholds in memory performance and non-verbal intellectual ability influence metacognitive monitoring accuracy to identify group-specific patterns that might be masked by an overall linear analysis. We assessed the monitoring discrimination of 290 kindergarteners (Mage 6 years) using a paired-associates learning task. Results showed small correlations between task performance, intellectual ability, and metacognitive monitoring. Non-verbal intellectual ability provided explanatory value for monitoring accuracy beyond memory performance. We observed group-specific results consistent with the unskilled-and-unaware effect; children with the highest memory skills were more effective at discriminating between correct and incorrect answers than their peers with the lowest memory skills. However, kindergarteners with the highest non-verbal intellectual abilities did not demonstrate greater cognitive adaptability in novel tasks, as their monitoring accuracy was comparable to that of peers with average or lower intellectual abilities. Findings indicate that both task performance and non-verbal intellectual ability are relevant for monitoring accuracy, but the impact of non-verbal intellectual ability was less significant than anticipated. The modest correlation suggests that kindergarteners' non-verbal intellectual ability and metacognitive monitoring abilities operate relatively independently.

The study examines metacognitive monitoring accuracy of the learning activity of university students in terms of managing emotions skills. The current results continue to expand an investigation of metacognitive monitoring accuracy factors in university students. The main instruments used in the study were the “MSCEIT V 2.0” test and the “EmIn” questionnaire aiming to find out the relationships between the levels of emotional intelligence such as managing emotions skills and metacognitive monitoring accuracy rates. Metacognitive monitoring accuracy was defined as the difference coefficient between subjective assessment of the accuracy of performing (metacognitive judgements rates) and test results. We took into account such profiles of metacognitive activity as: profiles of “MMA+ +” and “MMA− −” rates that denote accurate metacognitive monitoring and profiles of “INK− +” and “IK+ −” rates that denote inaccurate metacognitive monitoring. The results indicate the significance of the empirically established correlations of the medium and high levels between the variables of managing emotions skills according to the “MSCEIT V 2.0” test and metacognitive monitoring accuracy rates in JOLs and RCJs. At the trend level, the students with medium levels of managing emotions skills (“MSCEIT V 2.0”) are more accurate in their judgments, while the students with very high, high, medium, and partially very low levels of managing emotions skills (“EmIn”) are more accurate in their metacognitive judgments. Thus, the results of the analysis found in the study can play an important role in the process of understanding the relationship between metacognitive monitoring accuracy and the learning activities in university students in terms of managing emotions skills. A promising direction of research of emotional intelligence of students is the study of the influence of using emotions to facilitate thought skills on metacognitive monitoring accuracy of the learning activities in university students.

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the effects of a phrase-cued reading intervention on reading fluency and comprehension in children with borderline intellectual functioning. Methods: The participants were three fifth-grade students with borderline intellectual functioning who demonstrated difficulties in reading fluency. A single-group AB design consisting of baseline–intervention–maintenance phases was employed. The intervention, delivered individually over 16 sessions, taught the phrase-cued reading strategy step-by-step. Reading fluency was measured by the number of words read correctly per minute, and reading comprehension was assessed through scores on factual and inferential questions. Results: All three participants showed improvement in both reading fluency and reading comprehension, and the effects were maintained during the maintenance phase. In particular, the improvement in reading comprehension was more prominent in the inferential comprehension than in literal comprehension. Conclusion: The phrase-cued reading strategy was found to be effective in enhancing sentence structure awareness and meaning prediction abilities in children with borderline intellectual functioning, thereby improving their reading fluency and comprehension. These findings suggest that phrase-cued reading is a useful and effective instructional strategy for supporting reading development in this population.

The theoretical analysis of the researches on the influence of accuracy of metacognitive monitoring on the success of educational activity was carried out in the article. By metacognitive monitoring, we mean the ability to assess the current state of cognitive activity and the focus on tracking whether the subject is correct on the problem posed, and on establishing a level of understanding of the processed material. When considering the properties of metacognitive monitoring, one should pay attention to its accuracy. The precision of metacognitive monitoring allows an individual to successfully use effective metacognitive strategies to achieve the goals of cognition. This provides an advantage in planning information processing processes and identifying effective strategies in the future. The judgments of metacognitive monitoring are an important source of student control of cognitive processes during the acquisition of information. Obviously, in the case of excessive assurance, when memorizing the educational material, the student does not pay enough attention to study it, as he mistakenly believes that he has learnt it. However, underestimating its own abilities, the student will spend too much effort and time to process the information. The main trends in the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring and the success of learning activities are presented by the following assertions: high indicators of monitoring development, measured by various questionnaires, correlate positively with academic achievements and the success of the implementation of knowledge tests; School students and college students who demonstrate more precise metacognitive monitoring of the success of the tests of knowledge, have higher scores on these tests, and also have higher rates of academic performance; School students and college students who demonstrate low performance of knowledge tests, as well as low academic performance, tend to re-evaluate their knowledge. Keywords: metacognitive processes, metacognitive monitoring, learning activity, overconfidence, underconfidence, calibration. Accepted: 07. 0 9 .2018 Reviewed: 21 .0 9 .2018 Published: 12 .10.2018 DOI: https://doi.org/10.31108/3.2019.2.9.4 * * * * * Завантажити/прочитати статтю PDF

This study investigated the relationship between executive functions and metacognition. Both constructs have been well-studied, but little research has focused on their connections. The goal of the current investigation was to increase the understanding of the relationship between metacognition and executive functions by assessing the relationships between metacognitive monitoring accuracy and the three component executive functions (updating, inhibition, and shifting) among college students. Metacognitive monitoring accuracy was measured using a knowledge monitoring accuracy (KMA) test. The three components of executive functions, updating, inhibition, and shifting were measured, respectively, using the ABCD updating task, the Stroop color–word interference test, and the letter–number task. The Tower of Hanoi task was used to measure the complex executive functions (inhibition and updating). Correlation and regression analyses were performed to examine the relationships. The results indicate that updating is the only component executive function that significantly correlated with metacognitive monitoring, suggesting that metacognition—specifically, metacognitive monitoring—is associated with at least one component of executive functioning.

The study aimed to examine whether oral reading prosody-the use of acoustic features (e.g., pitch and duration variations) when reading passages aloud-predicts reading fluency and comprehension abilities. We measured vocabulary, syntax, word reading, reading fluency (including rate and accuracy), reading comprehension (in Grades 3 and 4), and oral reading prosody in Taiwanese third-grade children (N = 109). In the oral reading prosody task, children were asked to read aloud a passage designed for third graders and then to answer forced-choice questions. Their oral reading prosody was measured through acoustic analyses including the number of pause intrusions, intersentential pause duration, phrase-final comma pause duration, child-adult pitch match, and sentence-final pitch change. Analyses of variance revealed that children's number of pause intrusions differed as a function of word reading. After controlling for age, vocabulary and syntactic knowledge, and word reading, we found that different dimensions of oral reading prosody contributed to reading rate. In contrast, the number of pause intrusions, phrase-final comma pause duration, and child-adult pitch match predicted reading accuracy and comprehension. Oral reading prosody plays an important role in children's reading fluency and reading comprehension in tone languages like Mandarin. Specifically, children need to read texts prosodically as evidenced by fewer pause intrusions, shorter phrase-final comma pause duration, and closer child-adult pitch match, which are early predictive makers of reading fluency and comprehension.

The effects of concept mapping and summarisation on L2 readers' comprehension monitoring and metacognitive accuracy : a mixed-methods study

The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between anxiety and performance on measures of reading fluency and reading comprehension in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students. The study found that there is a significant negative correlation between social anxiety and reading comprehension but no significant correlation between social anxiety and reading fluency. These findings further demonstrate the distinction between the cognitive processes that underlie reading fluency and reading comprehension. The results also align with the tenets of Processing Efficiency Theory in that more complex tasks that significantly tax working memory (like reading comprehension) are more likely affected by anxiety than those tasks that do not rely as heavily on working memory (such as reading fluency). The Effect of Anxiety on the Measurement of Reading Fluency and Comprehension With increased federal and state mandates for accountability, schools are increasing their efforts to insure quality instruction and positive student outcomes through frequent progress monitoring. Due to its impact on many academic areas, students’ reading has received the most focus and attention in these efforts. As such, it is essential to insure that assessment for classroom monitoring and decision-making is maximally reliable, valid, and interpreted correctly. In this regard, the current study investigated the effects of anxiety on the measurement of student reading fluency and comprehension. Based on the literature supporting Processing Efficiency Theory, the researchers hypothesized that students’ assessed anxiety would have a greater influence on students’ reading comprehension than their reading fluency.

As stated in the literature, it is widely accepted that reading fluency and comprehension are critical components of English learning. Reading fluency, which refers to a person's ability to read a text quickly and accurately, is a necessary skill for students when learning English, and numerous studies on reading fluency and comprehension have been conducted. However, research on the relationship between reading fluency and reading comprehension at the high school level is still uncommon. Therefore, this research sought to determine the relationship between students' reading fluency and reading comprehension. This study took a quantitative approach, collecting data from 36 students in Class XI IPA 1 at UPT SMA Negeri 3 Empat Lawang using an oral reading fluency test and a reading comprehension test. The data were analysed using the Person Product-Moment correlation analysis in SPSS Version 20 for Windows. This study found a strong correlation between reading fluency and reading comprehension (0.000<0.829). The higher the reading fluency of students, the higher their reading comprehension achievement will be. On the contrary, the lower the reading fluency of students, the lower their reading comprehension achievement. The implications of the study’s findings and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

The need for research-based instructional support for culturally and linguistically diverse students with reading difficulties is a national priority. In this rural Hawaii study, teachers and parents selected four first-grade students who were experiencing delays in reading fluency and comprehension skills to receive tutoring and video self-modeling interventions. Two students were identified as having specific learning disabilities, one as being developmentally delayed, and one was in the process of being referred for special education. Community partners were trained to provide tutoring with the 25-step ACE reading protocol. Two 2-minute self-modeling videotapes were constructed: the first depicted the student fluently reading a passage; the second showed the student applying a story map and successfully answering comprehension questions. A multiple-baseline design across two behaviors (reading fluency and comprehension) was used to observe the effect of each intervention on reading fluency and comprehension skills. Reading fluency, measured in number of correct words per minute, doubled for three students and quadrupled for the fourth by the end of eight weeks. Reading comprehension, measured in number of correct responses, reached pre-established criteria. Viewing the self-modeling videotapes was associated with reduced variability and maintenance of increased performance. Follow-up indicated that gains maintained for six months. Teachers and parents reported generalization to classroom and home.

BackgroundCognitive and linguistic factors have been incorporated into models to explain reading comprehension beyond classical models of reading. This study explores the contribution of executive functions, mainly domain‐general and reading‐specific cognitive flexibility, in reading comprehension of science texts in monolingual Spanish speaking upper elementary students.MethodsA total of 275 Chilean students from fourth to sixth grade participated in this study. They were evaluated in working memory, inhibition, reading fluency, domain‐general and reading‐specific cognitive flexibility, academic vocabulary and science reading comprehension.ResultsThe results show that cognitive flexibility is a variable that explains performance in science reading comprehension across elementary grades. Furthermore, reading domain‐specific cognitive flexibility was found to be the variable that explains additional performance in science reading comprehension above inhibition, reading fluency, academic vocabulary and domain‐general cognitive flexibility in Grade 4 and Grade 5, but not in Grade 6.ConclusionsThese results suggest the contribution of cognitive variables such as cognitive flexibility in explaining performance in reading comprehension of science texts. The need to develop cognitive tests specific to reading domain is also discussed.

Student learning in introductory science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses is often self-regulated. For self-regulated learning to be effective, students need to engage in accurate metacognitive monitoring to make appropriate metacognitive control decisions. However, the accuracy with which individuals monitor their task performance appears to largely overlap with their ability to perform that task. This study examined the trajectories in the accuracy of students’ metacognitive monitoring over the course of a semester, along with the effect of monitoring accuracy feedback. The results indicate that some students improve the accuracy of their predictions over the course of a semester. However, low-performing students are less accurate at predicting their exam grades, and tend not to improve their metacognitive calibration over the course of a semester. In addition, providing low-performing students with calibration feedback may lead to greater overconfidence.