Two studies were conducted to investigate effects of domain knowledge on metacognitive monitoring across the life span in materials of different complexity. Participants from 4 age groups (3rd-grade children, adolescents, younger and older adults) were compared using an expert-novice paradigm. In Study 1, soccer experts' and novices'…

The present study was conducted to explore the potential positive influence of a short strategy training on metacognitive monitoring competencies covering a life-span approach. Participants of four age groups (3rd-grade children, adolescents, younger and older adults) concluded a paired-associate learning task. Additionally, they gave delayed…

Several cognitive deficits associated with reading and mathematics problems have been identified. However, only few studies assessed the impact of these variables in children with combined problems in reading and arithmetics, and none of these studies included children with low IQ. This longitudinal study was designed to assess the impact of…

Two studies were conducted to investigate whether context variations were suitable to improve metacognitive judgments in children in a complex, everyday memory task. In the first phase of each experiment, participants were shown a short event (video) and gave judgments-of-learning (JOLs), that is, rated their certainty that they would later be…

This longitudinal study explored the importance of kindergarten measures of phonological awareness, working memory, and quantity-number competencies (QNC) for predicting mathematical school achievement in third graders (mean age 8 years 8 months). It was found that the impact of phonological awareness and visual-spatial working memory, assessed at…

A previous study with adults [Koriat, A. (2008a). "Easy comes, easy goes? The link between learning and remembering and its exploitation in metacognition." "Memory & Cognition," 36, 416-428] established a correlation between learning and remembering: items requiring more trials to acquisition (TTA) were less likely to be recalled than those…

Recent work on metacognition indicates that monitoring is sometimes based itself on the feedback from control operations. Evidence for this pattern has not only been shown in adults but also in elementary schoolchildren. To explore whether this finding can be generalized to a wide range of age groups, 160 participants from first to eighth grade…

Two studies were conducted in which two different indicators of metacognitive monitoring were investigated in a complex everyday memory task. In the first phase of each experiment, 8- and 10-year-olds as well as adults were shown a short event (video) and gave judgments of learning, that is, rated their certainty that they would later be able to…

Children who were 4 to 8 years of age were asked to perform a sort-recall task where only half of the items had to be studied and remembered. Following a baseline trial, children were assigned to 1 of 3 groups and were prompted to use either a sorting or a clustering strategy (experimental groups) or were not prompted at all (control group).…

This article reports findings of the Wurzburg and Gottingen Longitudinal Memory Studies, which focused on children's verbal memory development. The studies started with 102 (German) kindergarten children in Wurzburg and 86 second-graders in Gottingen who were tested on various memory measures, including sort-recall, memory capacity, metamemory,…

Educational films for children aim to impart knowledge about a certain topic. In the present paper, it is investigated how much and what kind of information children can remember from educational films and how knowledge acquisition through films could be enhanced. The studies described here were designed to test the hypothesis that children's…

Examined memory in 8- to 12-year-olds classified as either strategic or non-strategic on a sort-recall pretest. Found, at the end of 11 weeks, that changes to strategic behavior occurred suddenly rather than gradually. Once children began using organizational strategies, recall improved immediately. Deliberate strategy use was reflected in sorting…

Examined role of accuracy motivation in event recall among 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds, and adults. In high accuracy motivation condition, children as young as 6 were to withhold uncertain answers for benefit of accuracy. Expected quality-quantity tradeoff emerged only for peripheral items. The "I don't know" option condition decreased the…

Three experiments examined children's strategic regulation of memory accuracy. Found that younger (7 to 9 years) and older (10 to 12 years) children could enhance the accuracy of their testimony by screening out wrong answers under free-report conditions. Findings suggest a developmental trend in level of memory accuracy actually achieved.…

Compared predictive value of kindergarten phonological awareness tasks and letter knowledge on 134 German first and second graders' literacy performance. Found that phonological awareness tasks varied in prediction of later literacy but were better predictors than letter knowledge. Kindergarten letter knowledge also reliably predicted later…