Goal-Driven and Data-Driven Metacognitive Monitoring

Research in metacognition (Koriat, Ma'ayan, & Nussinson, 2006) suggests bi-directional links between monitoring and control during learning: When self-regulation is goal-driven, monitoring affects control so that increased study time (ST) enhances judgments of learning (JOLs), but when it is data-driven, JOLs are based on the feedback from control, and therefore JOLs decrease with ST under the heuristic that ease of encoding is diagnostic of successful recall. Evidence for both types of relationship occurring within the same situation was found for adults. We examined the development of the ability to respond differentially to datadriven and goal-driven variation in ST within the same task. Children, 5-6th-graders, exhibited a positive ST-JOL relationship for goal-driven regulation and a negative relationship for data-driven regulation but never in the same task. In contrast, the JOLs and recall of ninth-graders' and college students yielded differential co-sensitivity to data-driven and goal-driven variation. The 5-6th-graders also evidenced an adult-like pattern of JOLs and recall under a partitioning procedure that helped them in factoring the variation in ST that is due to data-driven and goal-driven variation in ST. The results are discussed in terms of the metacognitive sophistication needed for considering both types of variation simultaneously in making metacognitive judgments.