Development of Children's monitoring and control when learning from texts: effects of age and test format

This study investigated elementary school children's development of monitoring and control when learning from texts. Second (N = 138) and fourth (N = 164) graders were tested in the middle (T₁) and end (T₂) of the school year. The study focused on the cross-sectional and longitudinal development of monitoring and control, and aimed to investigate the development of metacognition for two test formats. After reading expository texts, children completed a comprehension test consisting of open-ended and true-false questions. They monitored their test performance by making confidence judgments, and controlled performance by deciding whether to maintain or withdraw their given answers. Overall, monitoring and control accuracy was higher for open-ended questions than for true-false questions. For open-ended questions, results indicated higher metacognitive accuracy for fourth graders than second graders. No such age effects were found for monitoring and control for true-false questions. Longitudinally, children of both age groups improved their monitoring and control accuracy from T₁ to T₂, for open-ended and true-false questions. For both test types, improvement mainly occurred for the monitoring and controlling of incorrect, rather than correct answers. Additionally, the results indicated inter-individual stability of performance, but no stability of monitoring and control accuracy over time. The findings indicate that developmental as well as task-related factors affect children's metacognitive accuracy.

Children and adolescents' performance on a medium-length/nonsemantic word-list test

Word-list learning tasks are among the most important and frequently used tests for declarative memory evaluation. For example, the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C) and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test provide important information about different cognitive-neuropsychological processes. However, the impact of test length (i.e., number of words) and semantic organization (i.e., type of words) on children's and adolescents' memory performance remains to be clarified, especially during this developmental stage. To explore whether a medium-length non-semantically organized test can produce the typical curvilinear performance that semantically organized tests produce, reflecting executive control, we studied and compared the cognitive performance of normal children and adolescents by utilizing mathematical modeling. The model is based on the first-order system transfer function and has been successfully applied to learning curves for the CVLT-C (15 words, semantically organized paradigm). Results indicate that learning nine semantically unrelated words produces typical curvilinear (executive function) performance in children and younger adolescents and that performance could be effectively analyzed with the mathematical model. This indicates that the exponential increase (curvilinear performance) of correctly learned words does not solely depend on semantic and/or length features. This type of test controls semantic and length effects and may represent complementary tools for executive function evaluation in clinical populations in which semantic and/or length processing are affected.

[Development of skills to report "roughly" and "exactly" with different levels of exactness]

This study examined the development of skills to report with different levels of exactness. A total of 62 first-grade children and 58 fourth-grade children were asked about numbers and lengths (numeral tasks) and colors and positions of objects (nominal tasks) with instructions suggesting different levels of exactness, "roughly" or "exactly". In Study 1, the instructions were given as a between-subjects factor. The results showed that when the "roughly" instruction was given, participants gave approximate answers more frequently than when the "exactly" instruction was given especially in the numeral tasks, and older children did so more frequently than younger children. In Study 2, the instructions were given as a within-subjects factor: a half of participants were given "roughly" and then "exactly" instructions, and the others were given the instructions in the opposite order. The results showed that younger children could change the levels of answers depending on instruction in the numeral tasks but not in the nominal tasks, whereas older children could do so in both tasks. The results suggest that the skills for reporting with different levels of exactness are related not only to cognitive development, but also to the linguistic context, such as the tasks and instructions.

Children's strategic regulation, metacognitive monitoring, and control processes during test taking

BACKGROUND

From the perspective of self-regulated learning, the interplay between learners' individual characteristics and the context of testing have been emphasized for assessing learning outcomes.

AIMS

The present study examined metacognitive processes in children's test-taking behaviour and explored their impacts on performance. Further, it was investigated whether differences in retrieval processes (operationalized through item difficulty) contribute to performance in strategic regulation skills.

SAMPLE AND METHODS

A total of 107 participants (8-/9- and 11-/12-year-olds) solved a cloze test including answerable (easy, medium, and difficult questions) and unanswerable questions about an earlier presented educational film, gave confidence judgments to every answer, and were then allowed to withdraw answers if they wished. Two different scoring schemes for test performance were compared to a control group.

RESULTS

Analyses revealed relatively adequate monitoring processes when metacognitively distinguishing easy, difficult, and unanswerable items and correct and incorrect answers. At the same time, there was developmental progression in the ability to accurately monitor uncertainty. As to control processes, all children proved to be able to adjust their test-taking behaviour to the benefit of test accuracy by withdrawing mainly incorrect answers. Controlling was more efficient for easy than for difficult and unanswerable items.

CONCLUSION

The study offers evidence for the impact of metacognitive skills in children's learning outcomes and documents strategic behaviour during test taking, as well as developmental progression in the involved skills. Further, findings underline the importance of memory retrieval for subsequent metacognitive processes.

Digits Backward and the Children's Embedded Figures Test among School-Age Spanish Children

This study examined whether performance on a single working-memory task (Digits Backward) was associated with scores on field-dependence-independence, as measured on the Children's Embedded Figures Test. Four different age groups of children were tested ( N = 144): 33 8-yr.-olds, 40 9-yr.-olds, 33 10-yr.-olds, and 38 11-yr.-olds. Children were classified into three groups (Field-dependent, Field-independent, and Intermediate) within each age range. Analyses of variance indicated performance on the Digits Backward was significantly higher for the children in the 11-yr.-old group than the youngest group (8-yr.-olds). Children in the Field-independent groups also had significantly higher scores than those in the Field-dependent or Intermediate groups. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.