The relation between intellectual and metacognitive skills from a developmental perspective

The first objective of this study was to establish to what extent metacognitive skill development is associated with intelligence. As a second objective, the generality vs. domainspecificity of maturing metacognitive skills was investigated. Both issues have major implications for the training and transferability of metacognitive skills. Participants from four age groups (fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-graders, and university students) performed four inductive learning tasks, representing different domains. Intelligence, metacognitive skillfulness and learning performances were assessed for each participant. Results show that metacognitive skillfulness is a general, person-related characteristic across age groups, rather than being domain-specific. Moreover, metacognitive skills appear to develop and to contribute to learning performance, partly independent of intelligence. Educational implications are discussed. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.