Journal Alert - METACOGNITION AND LEARNING

> Title:
> The relation between preschool children's false-belief understanding and domain-general experimentation skills
>
> Authors:
> Piekny, J; Grube, D; Maehler, C
>
> Source:
> *METACOGNITION AND LEARNING*, 8 (2):103-119; AUG 2013
>
> Abstract:
> The focus of the present study is on the developmental antecedents of
> domain-general experimentation skills. We hypothesized that false-belief
> understanding would predict the ability to distinguish a conclusive from
> an inconclusive experiment. We conducted a longitudinal study with two
> assessment points (t1 and t2) to investigate this hypothesis. As
> language, executive functioning, working memory, and intelligence have
> been discussed as potential influencing factors in theory of mind and
> scientific reasoning development, we included measures of these
> abilities as control variables. We recruited 161 preschool children (73
> girls and 88 boys); we administered a false-belief task, an
> experimentation task, and the control variables at t1 when the children
> were 4 years old. We repeated the false-belief and experimentation tasks
> at t2 when the children were 5 years old. Our results show that children
> who solved the false-belief task correctly at age 4 were more likely to
> solve the experimentation task correctly at age 5, but not vice versa,
> even after controlling for the influence of language, executive
> functioning, working memory, and intelligence. The implications of these
> results on theories about the development of scientific reasoning and
> for science education concepts for young children are briefly discussed.
>
> ========================================================================
>
>
> *Pages: 121-143 (Article)
> *View Full Record: http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcAuth=Alerting&SrcApp=Alerting&DestApp=CCC&DestLinkType=FullRecord;KeyUT=CCC:000323897800002
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>
> Title:
> Metacognitive monitoring in university classes: anticipating a graded vs. a pass-fail test affects monitoring accuracy
>
> Authors:
> Barenberg, J; Dutke, S
>
> Source:
> *METACOGNITION AND LEARNING*, 8 (2):121-143; AUG 2013
>
> Abstract:
> Three field studies tested the hypothesis that anticipating a graded
> test as opposed to a pass-fail test enhances metacognitive monitoring.
> Participants were teacher candidates who completed a mid-term and a
> final test in psychology courses. Each participant chose whether the
> result of the final test should be evaluated with one of five grades or
> with a pass-fail decision. In both tests, participants answered
> true-false inference items about the contents of the course and
> indicated their confidence in the correctness of each answer. When a
> graded test was expected, confidence and the absolute accuracy of the
> confidence judgments increased and bias decreased to a greater extent
> than when a pass-fail decision was expected. However, expecting a grade
> increased participants' confidence not only in correct answers but also
> in incorrect answers (Study 1). Feedback and instructions emphasizing
> the importance of accurate discrimination between correct and incorrect
> answers did not weaken this effect (Study 2). The generalizability of
> the findings was investigated by reanalyzing the test results of
> participants in eight other psychology courses (Study 3). The results
> are discussed in terms of the motivational consequences of grading.
>
> ========================================================================
>
>
> *Pages: 145-171 (Article)
> *View Full Record: http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcAuth=Alerting&SrcApp=Alerting&DestApp=CCC&DestLinkType=FullRecord;KeyUT=CCC:000323897800003
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>
> Title:
> Looking back: reasoning and metacognition with narrative texts
>
> Authors:
> Franks, BA; Therriault, DJ; Buhr, MI; Chiang, ES; Gonzalez, CM; Kwon,
> HK; Schelble, JL; Wang, XS
>
> Source:
> *METACOGNITION AND LEARNING*, 8 (2):145-171; AUG 2013
>
> Abstract:
> This study explored the abilities of 5th, 8th, and 10th graders, and
> College students to reason logically about what they read. Both
> students' metacognitive behavior (looking back at previously read text)
> and their performance on logical deduction questions were recorded and
> analyzed in a reading task. Conditional logic premises and deductive
> questions were embedded in three narratives containing premise
> information that was factual (True Story), contrary to fact (False
> Story), or unverifiable via common world knowledge (Neutral Story). The
> texts and questions were presented one sentence at a time on a computer
> screen; participants controlled the presentation of sentences. For
> answering the questions, three response tasks were devised. One task
> (labeled Generate) required readers to generate their own logical
> conclusions in response to deduction questions. Two tasks (labeled Valid
> and Invalid) required readers to evaluate logically valid or logically
> invalid conclusions drawn by story characters in the texts. Students in
> early and late adolescence looked back more when asked to evaluate
> logical conclusions than when asked to generate conclusions on their
> own; College students' lookback frequencies were not significantly
> affected by response task, but were greater overall than those of
> younger students. With conditional forms requiring an uncertainty
> response (Affirmed Consequent and Denied Antecedent), readers looked
> back more when evaluating logically invalid conclusions than when
> evaluating logically valid ones. Readers of all ages were more likely to
> agree with story characters' (valid) uncertain conclusions with the AC
> and DA forms than they were to disagree with story characters' (invalid)
> certain conclusions to these forms. Both lookback frequency and
> performance on logic questions were lowest when readers were required to
> reason from contrary to fact premises.
>
> ========================================================================
>
>
> *Pages: 173-191 (Article)
> *View Full Record: http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcAuth=Alerting&SrcApp=Alerting&DestApp=CCC&DestLinkType=FullRecord;KeyUT=CCC:000323897800004
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>
> Title:
> The effect of delayed-JOLs and sentence generation on children's monitoring accuracy and regulation of idiom study
>
> Authors:
> van Loon, MH; de Bruin, ABH; van Gog, T; van Merrienboer, JJG
>
> Source:
> *METACOGNITION AND LEARNING*, 8 (2):173-191; AUG 2013
>
> Abstract:
> When studying verbal materials, both adults and children are often poor
> at accurately monitoring their level of learning and regulating their
> subsequent restudy of materials, which leads to suboptimal test
> performance. The present experiment investigated how monitoring accuracy
> and regulation of study could be improved when learning idiomatic
> phrases. Elementary school children (fourth and sixth-graders) were
> instructed to predict their test performance by providing judgments of
> learning (JOLs). They provided JOLs immediately after studying each
> idiom, after studying all idioms, or after studying all idioms followed
> by generating sentences in which the idioms were used. Correlations
> between JOLs and test performance showed that delayed-JOLs and
> delayed-JOLs with sentence generation were more accurate than immediate
> JOLs. JOLs after sentence generation also improved regulation of study
> compared to delayed-JOLs only. Analyses of JOL reaction times suggest
> that delayed-JOLs led children to retrieve the literal meaning of the
> idiom, whereas JOLs after sentence generation led children to focus on
> connections between studied information, contextual information, and
> prior knowledge. Sentence generation presents a promising method to
> improve regulation of study, and thus idiom learning.
>
>