Dividing attention impairs metacognitive control more than monitoring

AbstractMetacognition comprises both the ability to be aware of one’s cognitive processes (metacognitive knowledge) and to regulate them (metacognitive control). Research in educational sciences has amassed a large body of evidence on the importance of metacognition in learning and academic achievement. More recently, metacognition has been studied from experimental and cognitive neuroscience perspectives. This research has started to identify brain regions that encode metacognitive processes. However, the educational and neuroscience disciplines have largely developed separately with little exchange and communication. In this article, we review the literature on metacognition in educational and cognitive neuroscience and identify entry points for synthesis. We argue that to improve our understanding of metacognition, future research needs to (i) investigate the degree to which different protocols relate to the similar or different metacognitive constructs and processes, (ii) implement experiments to identify neural substrates necessary for metacognition based on protocols used in educational sciences, (iii) study the effects of training metacognitive knowledge in the brain, and (iv) perform developmental research in the metacognitive brain and compare it with the existing developmental literature from educational sciences regarding the domain-generality of metacognition.

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Metacognitive control processes in question answering: help seeking and withholding answers

Metacognition and Learning ◽

10.1007/s11409-021-09259-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Monika Undorf ◽

Iris Livneh ◽

Rakefet Ackerman

Keyword(s):

Help Seeking ◽

Question Answering ◽

Monetary Incentives ◽

Metacognitive Control ◽

Self Regulated Learning ◽

Response Strategies ◽

Seeking Help ◽

Subjective Confidence ◽

Different Populations ◽

The Relationship

AbstractWhen responding to knowledge questions, people monitor their confidence in the knowledge they retrieve from memory and strategically regulate their responses so as to provide answers that are both correct and informative. The current study investigated the association between subjective confidence and the use of two response strategies: seeking help and withholding answers by responding “I don’t know”. Seeking help has been extensively studied as a resource management strategy in self-regulated learning, but has been largely neglected in metacognition research. In contrast, withholding answers has received less attention in educational studies than in metacognition research. Across three experiments, we compared the relationship between subjective confidence and strategy use in conditions where participants could choose between submitting answers and seeking help, between submitting and withholding answers, or between submitting answers, seeking help, and withholding answers. Results consistently showed that the association between confidence and help seeking was weaker than that between confidence and withholding answers. This difference was found for participants from two different populations, remained when participants received monetary incentives for accurate answers, and replicated across two forms of help. Our findings suggest that seeking help is guided by a wider variety of considerations than withholding answers, with some considerations going beyond improving the immediate accuracy of one’s answers. We discuss implications for research on metacognition and regarding question answering in educational and other contexts.

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The effect of time pressure on metacognitive control: developmental changes in self-regulation and efficiency during learning

Metacognition and Learning ◽

10.1007/s11409-021-09262-y ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Gökhan Gönül ◽

Nike Tsalas ◽

Markus Paulus

Keyword(s):

Time Allocation ◽

Time Pressure ◽

Self Regulation ◽

Age Groups ◽

Study Time ◽

Developmental Differences ◽

Developmental Changes ◽

Metacognitive Control ◽

Metacognitive Cues ◽

Study Time Allocation

AbstractThe effect of time pressure on metacognitive control is of theoretical and empirical relevance and is likely to allow us to tap into developmental differences in performances which do not become apparent otherwise, as previous studies suggest. In the present study, we investigated the effect of time pressure on metacognitive control in three age groups (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, and adults, n = 183). Using an established study time allocation paradigm, participants had to study two different sets of picture pairs, in an untimed and a timed condition. The results showed that metacognitive self-regulation of study time (monitor-based study time allocation) differed between age groups when studying under time pressure. Even though metacognitive control is firmly coupled at 10 years of age, the overall level of self-regulation of adults was higher than that of children and adolescents across both study time conditions. This suggests that adults might have been more sensitive to experiential metacognitive cues such as JoL for the control of study time. Moreover, the timed condition was found to be more effective than the untimed, with regard to study time allocation. Also, there was an age effect, with adults being more efficient than 10- and 14-year-olds.

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Learning Analytics to Reveal Links Between Learning Design and Self-Regulated Learning

International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education ◽

10.1007/s40593-021-00249-z ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Yizhou Fan ◽

Wannisa Matcha ◽

Nora’ayu Ahmad Uzir ◽

Qiong Wang ◽

Dragan Gašević

Keyword(s):

Learning Analytics ◽

High Performance ◽

Process Mining ◽

Learning Experience ◽

Learning Design ◽

Metacognitive Control ◽

Self Regulated Learning ◽

Regulated Learning ◽

High Level ◽

Evaluation Of Learning

AbstractThe importance of learning design in education is widely acknowledged in the literature. Should learners make effective use of opportunities provided in a learning design, especially in online environments, previous studies have shown that they need to have strong skills for self-regulated learning (SRL). The literature, which reports the use of learning analytics (LA), shows that SRL skills are best exhibited in choices of learning tactics that are reflective of metacognitive control and monitoring. However, in spite of high significance for evaluation of learning experience, the link between learning design and learning tactics has been under-explored. In order to fill this gap, this paper proposes a novel learning analytic method that combines three data analytic techniques, including a cluster analysis, a process mining technique, and an epistemic network analysis. The proposed method was applied to a dataset collected in a massive open online course (MOOC) on teaching in flipped classrooms which was offered on a Chinese MOOC platform to pre- and in-service teachers. The results showed that the application of the approach detected four learning tactics (Search oriented, Content and assessment oriented, Content oriented and Assessment oriented) which were used by MOOC learners. The analysis of tactics’ usage across learning sessions revealed that learners from different performance groups had different priorities. The study also showed that learning tactics shaped by instructional cues were embedded in different units of study in MOOC. The learners from a high-performance group showed a high level of regulation through strong alignment of the choices of learning tactics with tasks provided in the learning design. The paper also provides a discussion about implications of research and practice.

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