From domain-specific to domain-general? The developmental path of metacognition for strategy selection

authors

• Geurten Marie
• Meulemans Thierry
• Lemaire Patrick

document type

abstract

We examined the developmental course of metacognition concurrently in arithmetic problem solving and in episodic memory. In Experiment 1, children aged between 8 and 13 were asked to judge the ease with which they would select the better strategy on a given item before actually selecting and executing it. In Experiments 2 and 3, children had to judge their level of confidence in a strategy once selected. Results of these experiments indicated that children are able to accurately judge whether they select the better strategy on a given item in both the arithmetic and the memory domains, and that this ability improves with age. Using a comprehensive set of metacognitive measures, our data support the hypothesis that metacognition is first domain-specific and then generalizes across domains as children mature. Implications of these findings to further our understanding of age-related changes in metacognition and its involvement in strategy selection are discussed.

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