The development of domain-specific and domain-general metacognitive monitoring

Abstract

Metacognitive monitoring may be a critical element in self-regulated learning. Two types of metacognitive monitoring have been identified: domain-specific and domain-general. Domain-specific metacognitive monitoring occurs when an individual is monitoring content-specific knowledge. Domain-general metacognitive monitoring occurs in situations when content-specific knowledge is not available. Currently no research is available that examines the developmental differences between domain-specific and domain-general metacognitive monitoring in children. This study attempted to address this issue by asking children in first, fourth, and seventh grade to make item-by-item confidence judgments while providing answers in two domain-specific tasks and two domain-general tasks. Two working memory spans tasks were also employed to control for maturational processes. Domain-specific metacognitive monitoring appeared earlier than domain-general metacognitive monitoring. Both domain-specific and domain-general metacognitive monitoring appear to benefit from experience because older students were more accurate metacognitive monitors and less overconfident than younger students. Maturational processes likely play a less significant role than experience in student improvement at metacognitive monitoring than previously thought