Metacomprehension for educationally relevant materials: dramatic effects of encoding-retrieval interactions

Abstract

As the metacomprehension literature has grown, important discoveries pertinent to education havebeen made. For example, as students are better able to assess their knowledge and implement appropriate study strategies, presumably their acquisition and retention of course material improves. Accordingly, we consider the metacomprehension literature with an emphasis on factors that impact metacomprehension accuracy. Several studies have demonstrated that metacomprehension prediction accuracy will improve to the extent that people engage in enriched-encoding activities. More recently, research by Thomas and McDaniel (in press) has suggested that enriched-encoding manipulations interact with retrieval to impact both retention and metacomprehension and, in turn, the effectiveness of controlling subsequent study. Thus, matching enriched-encoding activities with the criterial test plays a critical role in metacomprehension accuracy and control of studying.