The role of metacognition in monitoring performance and regulating learning in early readers
Date
2022Metadata
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Taouki, I., Lallier, M. & Soto, D. The role of metacognition in monitoring performance and regulating learning in early readers. Metacognition Learning 17, 921–948 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-022-09292-0
Metacognition and Learning
Metacognition and Learning
Abstract
Metacognition refers to the capacity to reflect upon our own cognitive processes. Its contribution
to reading development, when children start building their orthographic lexicon,
still remains unknown. Here, we evaluate the metacognitive efficiency of children aged
between 6 and 7 years old (N = 60) in 5 experimental tasks; four linguistic tasks assessing
orthographic lexical processing and a non-linguistic task unrelated to reading skills.
First, we investigated how metacognition on the experimental tasks related to standardised
on-paper reading performance, hence participants’ general reading level. Second, we
assessed whether these developing readers recruited common metacognitive mechanisms
across the different experimental tasks. Third, we explored whether metacognition in this
early stage was related to the longitudinal improvement in performance on a linguistic vs
a non-linguistic task. No association was found between students’ metacognition in the
reading-related tasks and performance on the standardised reading tests, notwithstanding
first-order performance correlated across these tasks. Remarkably, some negative correlations
were noted between students’ metacognitive ability in one task and task performance
in another task. Moreover, we found some evidence consistent with shared metacognitive
mechanisms for monitoring performance across tasks. Finally, metacognitive efficiency
significantly predicted children’s performance improvement across domains 10 months
later. These results suggest that the development of metacognitive processing may be dissociated
to some extent from reading-related linguistic abilities during the early stages of
formal education. Nevertheless, it may play a fundamental role in guiding students’ learning
across domains. These data highlight the importance of creating educational programs
fostering students’ metacognition as a long-term learning tool.