Abstract
Previous studies on metacognitive performance have explored children’s abilities during primary school (7–11 years) in abstract and mathematical reasoning tasks. However, there have been no studies evaluating the metamemory processes with spatial tasks in primary school children, and even more generally, only a few studies have explored spatial metacognition in adults. Taking as a preliminary study a Spanish school, the present work explores the validity of the confidence judgment model when thinking about one’s own performance in a spatial test, for boys and girls in Second Year of Primary Education (mean age of 7 years). A total of 18 boys and 15 girls applied a 4-point scale to evaluate, item by item, the confidence of their responses in the Spatial aptitude test “E” of the EFAI-1 (Factorial Assessment of Intellectual Abilities to mentally process visual stimuli). Accessibility and Accuracy Indexes were calculated for each item of the spatial task. The effect of gender was analyzed too. The tasks were administered in small groups; at the end examiners interviewed each participant, performing the confidence judgment task, item by item, of the EFAI-1 previously answered. The results (analyses carried out by SPSS) showed a high mean confidence (3 mean points out of a maximum of 4), without finding any significant differences either in the spatial performance or in the mean confidence rating between boys and girls. A significant relationship between confidence judgments and spatial task performance accuracy was found. The relationship between confidence judgments and spatial performance cannot be confirmed. The procedure adapted for testing spatial judgments about the own responses has been useful for showing the well calibrated perception about performance at this stage. The implications of the results of this exploratory study and the potential of the application of the procedure to promote thought about one’s own spatial performance and the development of strategies that modulate the effective approach of this type of spatial tasks are discussed within an educational approach.
Highlights
We considered the following issues in the present study: (a) whether these reflections are produced and are accurate at early ages, such as those in primary education, and (b) whether the results obtained in previous studies in the literature that have evaluated the implications of one’s own knowledge in the math and reasoning fields could be applied to the field of spatial cognition, as performance in a spatial task
Metacognition judgments underlie many activities related to daily decision making related to the academic performance and study strategies applied by students (i.e., [2]), no previous literature related to the ability to make this type of judgments applied to the self-evaluation of spatial performance in primary school children has been found to date
Koriat’s model offers a useful approach to analyze the metacognition in approaching spatial tasks [36], based on the accessibility hypothesis, that allow us to distinguish the amount of information that comes to the participant’s mind once the question is raised (Accessibility Index) and the probability that the information that comes to the participant0 s mind is correct (Accuracy Index)
Summary
When students decide whether they have studied enough for an exam, or whether they should study more, their decision is based on their confidence in making an accurate judgment about their knowledge These processes applied to spatial reasoning (e.g., whether we will be able to reach a certain place without the help of a map, whether we know how to interpret a graph or we should look for more information, whether we understand data organized in a table) have been scarcely studied during childhood. The present study evaluates whether 7 year-old children are capable of analyzing the confidence they have in their answers in a spatial task, i.e., the Spatial aptitude test “E” of the EFAI-1 (Factorial Assessment of Intellectual Abilities, [1]) This test assesses an approach to the general visual processing factor, “Gv”, and represents the ability to mentally process visual stimuli (rotate, bend, develop, etc.)
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