Metacognitive Monitoring Research Articles

Unskilled and unaware? Differences in metacognitive awareness between high and low-ability students in STEM

IntroductionMetacognition, or the ability to monitor and control one's cognitive processes, is critical for learning in self-regulated contexts, particularly in introductory STEM courses. The ability to accurately make predictions about one's ability and performance can determine the effectiveness in which students effectively prepare for exams and employ good study strategies. The Dunning-Kruger pattern, where low-performing individuals are more overconfident and less accurate at the ability to predict their performance than high-performing individuals, is robustly found in studies examining metacognitive monitoring. The extent to which the Dunning-Kruger pattern can be explained by the lack of metacognitive awareness is not yet established in the literature. In other words, it is unclear from prior work whether low-performing students are “unskilled and unaware” or simply “unskilled but subjectively aware.” In addition, arguments about whether this pattern is a psychological phenomenon or a statistical artifact of the measurement of metacognition can be found in the literature.MethodsStudents enrolled in three different physics courses made predictions about their exam scores immediately before and after taking each of the three exams in the course. Student predictions were compared to their exam scores to exam metacognitive accuracy. A new method for examining the cause of the Dunning-Kruger effect was tested by examining how students adjust their metacognitive predictions after taking exams.ResultsIn all contexts low-performing students were more overconfident and less accurate at making metacognitive predictions than high-performing students. In addition, these students were less able to efficiently adjust their metacognitive predictions after taking an exam.DiscussionThe results of the study provide evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect being a psychological phenomenon. In addition, findings from this study align with the position that the skills needed to accurately monitor one's performance are the same as those needed for accurate performance in the first place, thus providing support for the “unskilled and unaware” hypothesis.

Metacognitive strategies in mathematical modelling: a case study with engineering students

During the last years, mathematical modelling has been entering the field of engineering education because it is a bridge between mathematics and industry that also promotes the development of skills that require the engineer of the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, the modelling process is involved and requires the deployment of cognitive skills of superior level, particularly metacognitive skills. This contribution presents the results of a multiple qualitative case study on metacognitive strategies used by groups of engineering students associated with each transition of the mathematical modelling process. During the development of the course, observations and retrospective interviews were carried out, which evidenced the use of metacognitive planning strategies from simplification to interpretation; metacognitive monitoring strategies throughout the modelling process, metacognitive regulation strategies from mathematization to mathematical work and metacognitive evaluation strategies during simplification, mathematization and validation. The results expand the classification framework of metacognitive strategies for engineering students.

Is monitoring in executive functions related to metacognitive monitoring?

Executive functions (EF) and metacognition (MC) have so far been investigated separately, yet, on the theoretical level, they share commonalities. It remains unclear whether these skills correlate in young children, and more importantly, whether monitoring processes within each may be associated. Here, we tested 6- to 8-year-old children's (N = 312) EF with the Hearts and Flowers task and MC with a paired associates memory task and focused on monitoring as a potential associated process. We examined children's accuracy and reaction time (RT) in the Hearts and Flowers task, as well as their post-error slowing as an indicator of monitoring. We measured children's accuracy and the latency of their confidence judgments for their answers in the paired associates task as an indicator of explicit and implicit metacognitive monitoring, respectively. Results showed that, for both inhibition and shifting components of EF, there was a significant positive correlation between children's RT in the Hearts and Flowers and the latency of memory monitoring judgments. That is, children who were faster in self-evaluations of their memory performance (i.e., metacognitive monitoring) were also faster in executive functioning. Evidence for the relationship between accuracy in the Hearts and Flowers task and memory monitoring was inconclusive. Post-error slowing was not associated with any measure of memory monitoring. Together, these findings suggest that EF and memory monitoring are rather weakly associated in 6- to 8-year-old children although both can be considered as higher-order cognitive processes. Although children show indications of monitoring within both EF and MC, monitoring is unlikely to explain their link.

Age- and task-setting-related performance predictions in prospective memory: Can metacognition explain the age-prospective memory paradox?

This study explored the role of metacognition in the so-called “age-prospective memory (PM) paradox” by investigating the accuracy of younger and older adults’ predictions of their future PM performance in time-based tasks performed across laboratory and naturalistic settings. Metacognitive monitoring was assessed by asking participants to make judgments-of-learning (JOLs) on an item level for both the prospective (remembering that something has to be done) and retrospective (remembering what to do) components of PM. In terms of PM performance, the results for the prospective component revealed an age deficit in the laboratory-based task and an age benefit in the naturalistic task, in line with the age-PM paradox. In terms of metacognition, important age differences were found across settings. In particular, the results pointed to poor resolution of JOLs made by older adults in the laboratory and by younger adults in the naturalistic setting. This suggests that younger and older participants could not discriminate between items they would later hit or miss but did so in different settings. Furthermore, although both age groups exhibited overconfidence in the naturalistic setting, this bias was significantly stronger for the younger adults. This might explain the observed differences in performance. That is, the advantage older adults have in naturalistic tasks may stem from a better ability to predict performance in this setting compared to younger adults, who tend instead to heavily overestimate their capabilities and may therefore not engage in appropriate strategies or planning. These findings speak to the functional relevance of metacognitive monitoring processes for PM performance and suggest considering metacognition as a key factor in explaining the age-PM paradox.

Examining flight time, cognitive reflection, workload, stress and metacognition on decision making performance for pilots during flight simulation

Despite technological advancements, human decision errors still contribute to civil aviation accidents. This study investigated whether flight time, cognitive reflection, task-load, metacognition, and perceived stress predicted decision-making (DM) performance during two in-flight training simulations with 104 commercial pilots at Bogota International Airport. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the predictors accounted for 56% of the variance. Cognitive reflection, flight time and performance task load emerged as significant positive predictors. Cognitive reflection significantly moderated the relationship between flight time and DM performance, with pilots scoring lower on cognitive reflection showing improved DM with increased flight time, while controlling for performance task load. The study did not find significant relationships between stress metacognition and DM performance. The study emphasises the significance of advanced training methods in improving pilots’ DM, especially for those with low cognitive reflection. Future research should expand to multiple airlines, address gender balance, and incorporate direct measures of metacognitive monitoring.

Metacognitive Monitoring of the Visual System in Sustained Attention

Metacognitive Monitoring of the Visual System in Sustained Attention

The effect of calibration training on the calibration of intelligence analysts' judgments

AbstractExperts are expected to make well‐calibrated judgments within their field, yet a voluminous literature demonstrates miscalibration in human judgment. Calibration training aimed at improving subsequent calibration performance offers a potential solution. We tested the effect of commercial calibration training on a group of 70 intelligence analysts by comparing the miscalibration and bias of their judgments before and after a commercial training course meant to improve calibration across interval estimation and binary choice tasks. Training significantly improved calibration and bias overall, but this effect was contingent on the task. For interval estimation, analysts were overconfident before training and became better calibrated after training. For the binary choice task, however, analysts were initially underconfident and bias increased in this same direction post‐training. Improvement on the two tasks was also uncorrelated. Taken together, results indicate that the training shifted analyst bias toward less confidence rather than having improved metacognitive monitoring ability.

Students' Self-Regulated Learning in Physics: Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

This study aims to develop and validate an instrument that measures students' self-regulated learning in Physics. The pilot study involved 400 randomly selected Form 4 students taking Physics. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted to assess the suitability of the measurement items and to identify the construct dimensions. Three main components were identified through the EFA procedure, namely self-motivation (DP), metacognitive planning (PM), and metacognitive monitoring (PK). The field study involved 435 Form 4 students taking Physics from daily secondary schools. The study population consisted of Form 4 students from daily secondary schools across Peninsular Malaysia. The sample was selected using stratified random sampling and simple random sampling from four states: Perak, Kedah, Negeri Sembilan, and Kelantan. Data from the field study were used to confirm the validity and reliability of the instrument through the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) procedure. CFA results indicated that the developed instrument is valid and reliable for measuring students' self-regulated learning. Once the measurement model was confirmed through CFA, the researchers structured these constructs into a structural model and estimated the necessary parameters using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) procedure. This study makes a significant contribution by producing a valid and reliable instrument for measuring self-regulated learning among Form 4 Physics students. This instrument can be used in future research to enhance the understanding of factors influencing students' self-regulated learning in the context of Physics education.

Development of metacognitive monitoring and control skills in elementary school: a latent profile approach

AbstractThis study aims to understand individual differences between children in metacognitive monitoring and control processes and the developmental trajectories of metacognition over one year. Three indicators of procedural metacognition were used: monitoring accuracy (discrimination of confidence judgments between correct and incorrect test responses), effective restudy selections, and accuracy of response maintenance/withdrawal decisions. These indicators were measured for two tasks (text comprehension and Kanji memory) at two measurement points one year apart. Participants were 151 second graders (M age 7.61 years) and 176 fourth graders (M age 9.62 years). With latent profile analyses, distinct metacognition profiles were found for both grade levels at both measurement points. Children showed heterogeneity in the proficiency of metacognition but also in the extent to which metacognitive skills were generalizable across the two tasks. For second-grade children, being low at metacognition at the first measurement point was not associated with extra risks for low metacognition one year later. However, for fourth graders, children with low metacognitive skills appeared likely to stay low in metacognition over time and particularly showed ineffective restudy decisions. This indicates that they seemed at risk for a longer-term metacognitive deficiency. Findings may improve understanding of the heterogeneity of metacognition and support distinguishing typical from at-risk metacognitive development.

Metacognition bridges experiences and beliefs in sense of agency

Cognitive scientists differentiate the “minimal self” – subjective experiences of agency and ownership in our sensorimotor interactions with the world – from declarative beliefs about the self that are sustained over time. However, it remains an open question how individual sensory experiences of agency are integrated into the belief ofbeing an agent.We administered a sensorimotor task to measure subjects’ (n = 195) propensity to classify stimuli as self-caused and metacognitive monitoring of such judgements, and we compared these behavioral metrics to declarative beliefs about their agency. Subjects who were less sensitive to control cues also reported more negative agency beliefs, though positive beliefs were not clearly correlated with any sensorimotor measure. Importantly, this relationship between first-order sensitivity and declarative beliefs essentially disappears when controlling for metacognitive sensitivity. Results suggest agency beliefs are not related directly to the propensity to make positive agency judgements but are connected through introspective access.

Why fall for misinformation? Role of information processing strategies, health consciousness, and overconfidence in health literacy.

Health misinformation, defined as false or misleading claims lacking scientific evidence, poses a significant threat to public health. This paper investigates factors associated with the failure to discern misinformation, including health consciousness, information processing strategies, and inaccurate self-assessments of health literacy. Through an online experiment involving 707 English-speaking U.S. participants (mean age = 43 years, 56.2% female), we found that misinformation beliefs about nutrition, vaccination, vaping, and cancer were significantly correlated, implying susceptibility across health topics. Greater susceptibility was associated with higher health consciousness, lower objective health literacy, more elaboration, and more selective scanning. Results provided evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect and metacognitive monitoring errors, whereby confident individuals were unaware of inadequate health literacy and showed poor misinformation identification. Findings suggest that promoting both health literacy education and cognitive reflection skills among the general adult population could empower them to more critically evaluate online health information.

Constructive retrieval: Benefits for learning, motivation, and metacognitive monitoring

AimsWe tested whether combining constructive learning prompts with retrieval practice (constructive retrieval) positively affects delayed learning outcomes (factual knowledge, comprehension), metacognitive accuracy, and motivation. Sample & methodsUndergraduate students (N = 152) learned from a video-recorded lecture, and then engaged in follow-up learning activities involving retrieval practice, restudy, elaboration, or a combination of retrieval practice with elaboration. We ensured that initial retrieval success was high and that all groups had the same expectations about the nature of content to be tested. We assessed both factual knowledge and comprehension, as well as the respective indicators of metacognitive-monitoring accuracy (metamemory, metacomprehension). We assessed self-efficacy and situational interest as motivational variables. ResultsIn a one-week-delayed posttest, elaboration improved factual knowledge and comprehension. This pattern held whether learners just elaborated or additionally engaged in retrieval practice. Having students self-generate their own examples during retrieval practice improved comprehension, but merely letting students retrieve experimenter-provided examples did not. Students' self-reported mental effort mediated the factual knowledge benefits of retrieval practice. The number of students’ self-generated elaborations mediated comprehension benefits. Students engaging in constructive retrieval while learning revealed the highest metacognitive-monitoring accuracy in factual knowledge and comprehension. We found no differences between conditions regarding situational interest and self-efficacy. Motivation to reuse the respective learning strategies was higher in all conditions compared to restudy. ConclusionConstructive retrieval seems advantageous when considering its benefits on learning outcomes and metacognition. When working on retrieval tasks, students only profited from self-generated, but not from provided, examples with respect to comprehension.

How learners’ achievement goal motivation influences their metacognitive skills in online social annotations context?

ABSTRACT Online learning requires high self-regulated abilities facilitated by metacognitive skills. Achievement goal motivation impacts metacognition, but their relationship in online learning contexts lacks consensus. One of the components of achievement goal orientation is mastery goal orientation which focuses on learning and self-improvement. The other component, performance goal orientation, emphasises demonstrating competence. This quantitative study collected questionnaire and behavioural log data from 39 learners and examined the interplay between achievement goal motivation and metacognitive skills within an online social annotation environment. Findings revealed that mastery goal orientation positively correlated with metacognitive planning and regulation, while performance goal orientation was predominantly associated with metacognitive regulation. Neither goals significantly correlated with metacognitive monitoring. Cluster analysis indicated that ‘balanced achievers’ with higher performance goal orientation may play a pivotal role in promoting social cognition. These insights deepen understanding of motivating learners and creating effective online learning approaches by leveraging the influence of achievement goal motivation on metacognitive strategies.

Learning with videos: Do task instructions and the availability of a pause button matter?

AbstractBackgroundWhen watching educational online videos, learners need to determine whether the videos' contents are suitable for learning. Whereas this may induce metacognitive monitoring processes, it may also distract learners from the learning materials.ObjectivesIn the current set of experiments, we investigated whether asking participants to rate the suitability of three educational videos to impart knowledge (both experiments) and enabling participants to pause the video (Experiment 2) affects learning.MethodsExperiment 1 was conducted in the laboratory with a sample of university students. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions (rating task vs. viewing task). Experiment 2 was conducted online. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions resulting from the two factors task (rating task vs. viewing task) and pause button (available vs. not available).Results and ConclusionIn Experiment 1, we observed detrimental effects of the rating task on learning outcomes, but more accurate judgements of learning. In Experiment 2, we did not find any effects of the rating task on learning outcomes and the accuracy of the participants' judgements of learning. However, the inclusion of a pause button did result in more accurate judgements of learning. Further, exploratory analyses revealed that older participants reported higher levels of intrinsic and germane cognitive load than the younger participants. This increased effort only translated into better learning outcomes in the condition in that participants could pause the video. Thus, age is introduced as a potential boundary condition that should be investigated in instructional design research.

The relationship between metacognitive monitoring, non-verbal intellectual ability, and memory performance in kindergarten children

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.

Metacognitive Regulation Strategies Among Indonesian Undergraduate Students During Conic Sections Conceptualization

Metacognitive regulation ability can assist students in abstracting the concept of a conic section. However, research exploring students’ metacognitive regulation in abstracting a mathematical concept is still rare. Thus, this study aims to analyze students' metacognitive regulation consisting of monitoring and controlling in abstracting the conic sections concept. Three students were selected as research subjects from 26 undergraduate of mathematics education Indonesian students who were engaged in abstraction assignments. Three students were selected based on their abstraction of the conic section concept, where only one student succeeded and two students represented two types of abstraction errors present in the class. An indicator of student success in abstracting the concept of a conic section is that students can correctly identify the relationship between eccentricity and the conic curve.. After completing the task, students are given the MAI questionnaire to identify their metacognitive regulations. There were 52 items in the MAI, of which 17 items represented metacognitive knowledge and 35 items represented metacognitive regulation. Hence, this study utilized the 35 items. The paper indicates that there is a positive relationship between metacognitive regulation and abstraction processes of the three students. This relationship is particularly evident in the metacognitive monitoring component. We hypothesize that students with good metacognitive monitoring are associated with the success of the abstraction process. The findings of this study contribute to further research by suggesting that designing learning environments that support metacognitive regulation will assist students in successfully abstracting mathematical concepts.

Durable Benefits of Learning-by-Teaching for Research Question Generation Performance: A Field Experiment

Generating good questions is central to scientific inquiry. How can we improve this skill in classrooms? This field experiment showed that teaching others enhances students’ ability to generate higher-order research questions that create new knowledge. Whereas learning-by-teaching often involves delivering face-to-face or video-recorded lectures, we tested its efficient implementation via writing a verbatim (i.e., word-for-word) teaching script, exactly as how one would orate a lecture. In a research and statistical methods course, 199 undergraduates studied statistical concepts by writing verbatim teaching scripts or study notes. One month later, students’ long-term learning was assessed on a high-stakes test, whereby they explained the concepts, applied them to design a study to test a given hypothesis, and generated create-level research questions about the concepts. Writing teaching scripts enhanced students’ research question generation and concept application more than writing study notes. The teaching advantage for these higher-order outcomes held although both techniques produced comparably high basic understanding when students explained the concepts at test. Further, students displayed greater generative processing, metacognitive monitoring, and social presence when writing teaching scripts than study notes. Learning-by-teaching can be leveraged in an efficient and inexpensive way via writing verbatim teaching scripts to improve meaningful, durable learning in classrooms.

Metacognition and Mathematical Modeling Skills: The Mediating Roles of Computational Thinking in High School Students.

This study was to investigate the relationship between metacognition and the mathematical modeling skills of high school students, as well as the mediating role of computational thinking. A cluster sampling method was adopted to investigate 661 high school students, using the metacognition scale, computational thinking scale, and mathematical modeling skill test questions. The results showed that metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive monitoring had a direct and positive correlation with high school students' mathematical modeling skills. Additionally, the critical thinking dimension of computational thinking mediated the relationship between metacognitive knowledge, experience, monitoring, and mathematical modeling skills. These findings indicated that sufficient metacognition could improve the critical thinking of high school students' computational thinking and enhance their mathematical modeling skills.

No strong support for a Dunning–Kruger effect in creativity: analyses of self-assessment in absolute and relative terms

Competencies related to the evaluation of own cognitive processes, called metacognitive monitoring, are crucial as they help decide whether to persist in or desist from cognitive efforts. One of the most well-known phenomena in this context—the Dunning–Kruger effect—is that less skilled people tend to overestimate their performance. This effect has been reported for various kinds of performance including creativity. More recently, however, it has been suggested that this phenomenon could be a statistical artifact caused by the better-than-average effect and by regression toward the mean. Therefore, we examined the Dunning–Kruger effect in the context of creative thinking performance (i.e., divergent thinking ability) across two studies (Study 1: N = 425; Study 2: N = 317) and applied the classical quartile-based analysis as well as newly recommended, advanced statistical approaches: the Glejser test of heteroscedasticity and nonlinear quadratic regression. We found that the results indeed depended on the employed statistical method: While classical analyses supported the Dunning–Kruger effect across all conditions, it was not consistently supported by the more advanced statistical methods. These findings are in line with recent work challenging certain assumptions of the Dunning–Kruger effect and we discuss factors that undermine accurate self-assessments, especially in the context of creative performance.

Readers’ Behavior during a Monitoring Task in English as a Foreign Language: Connecting Outcomes and Mental Processing

Metacognitive skills are important for text comprehension, especially at university where most learning processes are unsupervised, and students rely on self-control and regulation when reading for comprehension. In today’s universities, English as L2 has become the vehicle language for teaching and learning. However, some studies have concluded that university students who read English as L2 have inadequate metacognitive monitoring skills. Higher level processing skills, such as comprehension monitoring, are difficult to study and then improve. The main goal of the present study was to analyze the mental processing of readers when they monitored expository texts in English as L2 considering their English proficiency. Mental processing was related to readers’ behavior when performing a reading task by using a set of variables guided by a psychological mechanism proposed for inconsistency detection. A total of 169 university students participated. The task was modeled on the error detection paradigm, which involved assessing the comprehensibility of scientific texts in English and reporting comprehension difficulties encountered. A special software was used to collect detailed data online about the readers’ text processing and written reports. The results confirmed the set of processing variables and the theory-based predictions.